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H. M. CALDWELL CO„ PUBLISHERS 
NEV YORK AND BOSTON J* ^ 






V 



:Da, Sip 



FROM THE 

AUTHOR TO THE READER- 



I HERE present you, courteous reader, with 
the record of a remarkable period of my life ; 
according to my application of it, I trust that 
it will prove, not merely an interesting 
record, but, in a considerable degree, useful 
and instructive. In that hope it is that I have 
drawn it up ; and that must be my apology 
for breaking through that delicate and 
honorable reserve, which, for the most part, 
restrains us from the public exposure of our 
own errors and infirmities. Nothing, indeed, 
is more revolting to English feelings, than 
the spectacle of a human being obtruding on 
our notice his moral ulcers, or scars, and 
tearing away that " decent drapery " which 
time, or indulgence to human frailty, may 
have drawn over them : accordingly, the 



4 yrom tbe Butbot to t&e TS^eaDet* 

greater part of our confessions (that is, spon- 
taneous and extra-judicial confessions) pro- 
ceed from demireps, adventurers, or swin- 
dlers ; and for any such acts of gratuitous self- 
humiliation from those who can be supposed 
in sympathy with the decent and self-respect- 
ing part of society, v/e must look to French 
literature, or to that part of the German 
which is tainted with the spurious and 
defective sensibility of the French. All this 
I feel so forcibly, and so nervously am I 
alive to reproach of this tendency, that I 
have for many months hesitated about the 
propriety of allowing this, or any part of 
my narrative, to come before the public eye, 
until after my death (when, for many reasons 
the whole will be published) : and it is not 
without an anxious review of the reasons for 
and against this step, that I have, at last, 
concluded on taking it. 

Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural in- 
stinct, from public notice ; they court 
privacy and solitude ; and, even in the choice 
of a grave, will sometimes sequester them- 
selves from the general population of the 
church-yard, as if declining to claim fellow- 
ship with the great family of man, and wish- 



jfrom the Butbcr to tDe IReaDer. 5 

Ing (in the affecting language of Mr. Words- 
worth) 

Humbly to express 

A pentitential loneliness. 

It is well, upon the whole, and for the 
interest of us all, that it should be so ; nor 
would I willingly, in my own person, mani- 
fest a disregard of such salutary feelings ; nor 
in act or word do anything to weaken them. 
But, on the one hand, as my self-accusatiou 
does not amount to a confession of guilt, so, 
on the other, it is possible that, if it did, the 
benefit resulting to others, from the record 
of an experience purchased at so heavy a 
price, might compensate, by a vast over- 
balance, for any violence done to the feelings 
I have noticed, and justify a breach of the 
general rule. Infirmity and misery do not, 
of necessity, imply guilt. They approach, 
or recede from, the shades of that dark alli- 
ance, in proportion to the probable motives 
and prospects of the offender, and the pallia- 
tions, known or secret, of the offence ; in 
proportion as the temptations to it were 
potent from the first, and the resistance to 
it, in act or in effort^ was earnest to the last. 



6 from tbe Hutbcr to the '^cnbcx. 

For my own part, without breach of truth 
or modesty, I may affirm, that my life has 
been, on the whole, the life of a philosopher : 
from my birth I was made an intellectual 
creature ; and intellectual in the highest 
sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, 
even from my school-boy days. If opium- 
eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am 
bound to confess that I have indulged in it 
to an excess, not yet recorded ^"^ of any other 
man, it is no less true, that I have struggled 
against this fascinating inthrallment with 
a religious zeal, and have at length accom- 
plished what I never yet heard attributed to 
any other man — have untwisted, almost to 
its final links, the accursed chain which 
fettered me. Such a self-conquest may rea- 
sonably be set off in counterbalance to any 
kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not to 
insist that, in my case, the self-conquest was 
unquestionable, the self-indulgence open to 
doubts of casuistry, according as that name 
shall be extended to acts aiming at the baro 

* ** Not yet recorded," I say, for there is one cele- 
brated man of the present day, who, if all be true 
which is reported of him, has greatly exceeded me in 
quantity. 



fxom tbe Butbor to tbe IReaDer* 7 

relief of pain, or shall be restricted to such 
as aim at the excitement of positive pleasure. 
Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge ; 
and, if I did, it is impossible that I might 
still resolve on the present act of confession, 
in consideration of the service which I may 
thereby render to the whole class of opium- 
eaters. But who are they ? Reader, I am 
sorry to say, a very numerous class indeed* 
Of this I became convinced, some years ago, 
by computing, at that time, the number of 
those in one small class of English society 
(the class of men distinguished for talent, or 
of eminent station) who were known to me, 
directly, or indirectly, as opium-eaters ; such 
for instance, as the eloquent and benevolent 
; the late Dean of ; "^ Lord ; Mr. 

•^ Isaac Milner. He was nominally known to the 
public as Dean of Carlisle, being colloquially always 
called Dean Milner ; but virtually he was best knowu 
in his own circle as the head of Queen's College, 
Cambridge, where he usually resided. In common 
with his brother, Joseph of Hull, he was substan« 
tially a Wesleyan Methodist ; and in that character, 
as regarded principles and the general direction of 
bis sympathies, he pursued his deceased brother's 
History of the Christian Church down to the era of 
Luther. lu these day 3 he would perhaps not bo 



8 from tbe Butbor to tbe IRea^et* 

, the philosopher ; =* a late under-secre- 



tary of state (who described to me the sensa- 
tion which first drove him to the use of opium, 

styled a Methodist, but simply a Low-Churchman. 
By whatever title described, it is meantime remark- 
able that a man confessedly so conscientious as Dean 
Milner could have reconciled to his moral views the 
holding of church preferment so important as this 
deanery in combination with the headship of an im- 
portant college. One or other must have been con- 
sciously neglected. Such a record, meantime, power- 
fully illustrates the advances made by the Church 
during the last generation in practical homage to self- 
denying religious scruples. A very lax man would 
not in these days allow himself to do that which 
thirty years ago a severe Church-Methodist (regarded 
by many even as a fanatic) persisted in doing, with- 
out feeling himself called on for apology. If I have 
not misapprehended its tenor, this case serves most 
Tividly to illustrate the higher standard of moral 
responsibility which prevails in this current gener- 
ation. We do injustice daily to our own age ; which, 
by many a sign, palpable and secret, I feel to be more 
emphatically, than any since the period of Queen 
Elizabeth and Charles I., an intellectual, a moving, 
and a self-conflicting age ; and inevitably, where 
the intellect has been preternaturally awakened, the 
moral sensibility must soon be commensurately 

* Who is Mr. Dash, the philosopher ? Really I 
have forgotten. Not through any fault of my own, 



JFtom tbe Butbor to the H^ea^er* 9 

in the very same words as tne Dean of , 

namely, " that he felt as though rats were 
gnawing and abraiding th^ coats of his 

stirred. The very distinctions, DSYchologic or meta- 
physical, by which, as its hinges and articulations^ 
our modern thinking moves, proclaim the subtler 
character of the questions which now occupy our 
thoughts. Not as pedantic only, but as suspiciously 
unintelligible, such distinctions would, one hundred 
and thirty years ago, have been viev/ed as indictable ; 
and perhaps (in company with Mandeville's " Politi- 
cal Economy") would have been seriously presented 
as a nuisance to the Middlesex Quarter Sessions. 
Becurring, however, to Dean Milner, and the recol- 
lections of his distinguished talents among the con* 
temporary circles of the first generation in this nine- 
teenth century. I wish to mention that these talents 
are most feeblv measured by any of his occasional 
T^ritings, all drat^^nfromhimapparently by mere pres- 
sure of casual convenience. In conversation it was 
that he asserted adequately his pre-eminent place. 
Wordsworth, who met him often at the late Lord 
Lonsdale's table, spoke of him uniformly as the 
chief potentate colloquially of his own generation, 
and as the man beyond all others (Burke being de- 
parted) who did not live upon his recollections, but 
me* the demands of every question that engaged his 
s^T^iaathy by spontaneous and elastic movements of 

?>"t on the motion of some aosurd coward having 
^ ""Niice potential at the press, all the names were 



IC jfrom tbe Butbor to tbc IReaDer. 

stcmacli " ) ; Mr. , and many others, 

hardly less known, whom it would be tedi- 

novel and original thought. As an opium-eater Dean 
Milner was understood to be a strenuous wrestler 
with the physical necessity that coerced him into this 
habit. From several quarters I have heard that his 
daily ration was thirty-four grains (or about eight 
hundred and fifty drops of laudanum), divided into 
four portions, and administered to him at regular 
intervals of six hours by a confidential valet. 

struck out behind my back in the first edition of the 
book, thirty-five years ago. I w^as not consulted ; 
and did not discover the absurd blanks until months 
afterward, when I was taunted with them very rea- 
sonably by a caustic reviewer. Kothing could have 
a more ludicrous effect than this appeal to shadows 
— to my Lord Dash, to Dean Dash, and to Mr. Secre- 
tary Dash. Yery naturally it thus happened to Mr. 
Philosopher Dash that his burning light, alas ! was 
extinguished irrecoverably in the general melee^ 
Meantime there was no excuse whatever for this ab- 
surd interference, such as might have been alleged in 
any personality capable of causing pain to any one 
person concerned. All the cases, except, perhaps, 
that of Wilberforce (about which I have at this 
moment some slight lingering doubts), were matters of 
notoriety to large circles of friends. It is due to Mr. 
John Taylor, the accomplished publisher of the work, 
that I should acquit him of any share in this absurd- 
ity. 



3from tbe Butbor to the IReaDen 11 

ous to mention. Now, if one class, compar- 
atively so limited, could furnish so many 
scores of cases (and that within the knowl- 
edge of one single inquirer), it was a natural 
inference that the entire population of Eng- 
land would furnish a proportionable number. 
The soundness of this inference, however, 
I doubted, until some facts became known 
to me, which satisfied me that it was not 
incorrect. 

I will mention two : 1. Three respectable 
London druggists, in widely remote quarters 
of London, from whom I happened lately to 
be purchasing small quantities of opium, 
assured me that the number of amateur 
opium-eaters (as I may term them) was, at 
this time, immense ; and that the difficulty 
of distinguishing these persons, t® whom 
habit had rendered opium necessary, from 
such as were purchasing it with a view to 
suicide, occasioned them daily trouble and 
di?6putes. This evidence respected London 
only. But, 2 (which will possibly surprise 
the reader more), some years ago, on pass- 
ing through Manchester, I was informed 
by several cotton manufacturers that their 
work-people were rapidly getting into the 



12 ffrom tbe Butbor to tbe TRcaDen 

practice of opium-eating ; so much so, that 
on a Saturday afternoon the counters of the 
druggists were strewed witli pills of one, two, 
or three grains, in preparation for the known 
demand of the evening. The immediate oc- 
casion of this practice was the lowness of 
wages, which, at that time, would not allow 
them to indulge in ale or spirits ; and, wages 
rising, it may be thought that this practice 
would cease : but, as I do not readily believe 
that any man, having once tasted the divine 
luxuries of opium, will afterward descend 
to the gross and mortal enjoyments of 
alcohol, I take it for granted 

That those eat now who never eat before ; 
And those who always eat now eat the more. 

Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium 
are admitted, even by medical writers who 
are its greatest enemies : thus, for instance, 
Awsiter, apothecary to Greenwich Hospital, 
in his "Essay on the Effects of Opium" 
(published in the year 1763), when attempt- 
ing to explain why Mead had not been suf- 
ficiently explicit on the properties, counter- 
agents, etc., of this drug, expresses himself 
in the following mysterious terms {ipovovTta 



ffrom tbe Butbot to tbe TReaDen 13 

ffoveTot(Ti) : " Perhaps he thought the subject 
of too delicate a nature to be made common ; 
and as many people might then indiscrim- 
inately use it, it would take from that nec- 
essary fear and caution, which should pre- 
vent their experiencing the extensive power 
of this drug ; for there are many properties 
in it^ if universally hnown^ that would habit- 
tcate the tfse, and make it 7nore in request 
withies than the Turks themselves ; the result 
of which knowledge," he adds, " must prove 
a general misfortune." In the necessity of 
this conclusion I do not altogether concur ; 
but upon that point I shall have occasion to 
speak at the close of my Confessions, where 
I shall present the reader with the moral 
of my narrative. * 

* And at this point I shall say no more than that 
opium, as the one sole catliolic anodyne which hith- 
erto has been revealed to man ; secondly, as the one 
sole anodyne which in a vast majority of cases is 
irresistible ; thirdly, as by many degrees the most 
potent of all known counter-agents to nervous 
irritation, and to the formidable curse of tcedium 
vitcB ; fourthly, as by possibility, under an argument 
undeniably plausible, alleged by myself, the sole 
known agent — not for curing when formed, but 
for intercepting while likely to be formed — the 



14 JFrom tbe Hutbor to tbe IRea^er* 

great English scourge of pulmonary consumption ;— 
I say that opium, as wearing these, or any of these, 
four beneficent characteristics — I say that any 
agent whatever making good such pretensions, 
no matter what its name, is entitled haughtily 
to refuse the ordinary classification and treatment 
which opium receives in books. I say that opium, 
©r any agent of equal power, is entitled to assume 
that it was revealed to man for some higher object 
than that it should furnish a target for moral de- 
nunciations, ignorant where they are not hypocritical, 
childish where not dishonest ; that it should be set 
up as a theatrical scarecrow for superstitious terrors, 
of which the result is oftentimes to defraud human 
suffering of its readiest alleviation, and of which the 
purpose is, " Ut pueris placeant et declamatio fiant." * 
In one sense, and remotely, all medicines and modes 
of medical treatment offer themselves as anodynes — 
that is, so far as they promise ultimately to relieve 
the suffering connected with physical maladies or 
infirmities. But we do not, in the special and or- 
dinary sense, designate as "anodynes" those rem- 
edies which obtain the relief from pain only as a 
secondary and distant effect following out from the 
cure of the ailment ; but those only we call anodynes 
which obtain this relief, and pursue it as th.^ primary 
and immediate object. If, by giving tonics to a 
child suffering periodic pains in the stomach, we 
were ultimately to banish those pains, this would not 
warrant us in calling such tonics by the name of 

* That they may win the applause of school-boys 
and furnish matter for a prize essay. 



iftom tbe Butbor to tbc IReaDer. 15 

anodynes ; for the neutralization of the pains would 
be a circuitous process of nature, and might probably 
require weeks for its evolution. But a true anodyne 
(as, for instance, half a dozen drops of laudanum or 
a dessert-spoonful of some warm carminative mixed 
with brandy) will often banish the misery suffered 
by a child in five or six minutes. Among the most 
potent of anodynes, we may rank hemlock, henbane, 
chloroform, and opium. But unquestionably the 
three first have a most narrow field of action, by 
comparison with opium. This, beyond all other 
agents made known to man, is the mightiest for its 
command, and for the extent of its command, 
over pain ; and so much mightier than any other, 
that I should think in a Pagan land, supposing it 
to have been adequately made known * through 
experimental acquaintance with its revolutionary 
magic, opium would have had altars and priests 

^ ^^ Adequately made known;'''' — Precisely this, 
however, was impossible. No feature of ancient 
Pagan life has more entirely escaped notice than the 
extreme rarity, costliness, and circuitous accessibility 
of the more powerful drugs, especially of mineral 
drugs ; and of drugs requiring elaborate preparation, 
or requiring much manufacturing skill. When the 
process of obtaining any manufactured drug was 
slow and intricate, it could most rarely be called for. 
And rarely called for, why should it be produced ? 
By looking into the history and times of Herod the 
Great, as reported by Josephus, the reader will gain 
some notion of the mystery and the suspicion sur- 
rounding all attempts at importing such drugs as 
could be applied to murderous purposes, conse- 
quently of the delay, the difficulty, and the peril in 
forming any familiar acQuaintanee with opium. 



16 ffrom tbe Butbor to tbe IReaDcn 

consecrated to its benign and tutelary powers. But 
this is not my own object in the present little work. 
Very many people have thoroughly misconstrued this 
object ; and therefore I beg to say here, in closing 
my Original Preface, a little remodeled, that what I 
contemplated in these Confessions was to emblazon 
the power of opium — not over bodily disease and 
pain, but over the grander and more shadowy world 
of dreams. 



CONFESSIONS 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 



Preliminary Confessions. 

These preliminary confessions, or intro- 
ductory narrative of the youthful advent- 
ures which laid the foundation of the 
writer's habit of opium-eating in after life, 
it has been judged proper to premise, for 
three several reasons : 

1. As forestalling that question, and giv- 
ing it a satisfactory answer, which else 
would painfully obtrude itself in the course 
of the Opium Confessions—" How came any 
reasonable being to subject himself to such 
a yoke of misery, voluntarily to incur a 
captivity so servile, and knowingly to fetter 
himself with such a sevenfold chain ? "—a 
question which, if not somewhere plausibly' 
resolved, could hardly fail, by the indigna- 



18 ^be Confessions of 

tion which it would be apt bo raise as 
against an act of wanton folly, to interfere 
with that degree of sympathy which is 
necessary in any case to an author's pur- 
poses. 

2. As furnishing a key to some parts of 
that tremendous scenery which afterward 
peopled the dreams of the opium-eater. 

3. As creating some previous interest of 
a personal sort in the confessing subject, 
apart from the matter of the confessions, 
which cannot fail to render the confessions 
themselves more interesting. If a man 
*' whose talk is of oxen" should become an 

• opium-eater, the probability is, that (if he is 
not too dull to dream at all) he will dream 
about oxen : whereas, in the case before him, 
the reader will find that the opium-eater 
boasteth himself to be a philosopher; and 
accordingly, that the phantasmagoria of 
his dreams (waking or sleeping, day-dreams 
or night-dreams) is suitable to one who, in 
that character, 

Humani nihil a se alienmn putat. 

For among the conditions which he deems 
indispensable to the sustaining of any claim 



an En^liBb ©ptum=JEater» 19 

to the title of philosopher, is not merely the 
possession of a superb intellect in its ana- 
lytic functions (in which part of the preten- 
sion, however, England can for some genera- 
tions show but few claimants; at least, he 
is not aware of any known candidate for 
this honor who can be styled emphatically 
a subtle thinker^ with the exception of 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge^ and, in a nar- 
rower department of thought with the re- 
cent illustrious exception ^ of David Bi- 
cardo) — but also on such a constitution of 

* A third exception might perhaps have been 
added: and my reason for not adding that exception 
is chiefly because it was only in his juvenile efforts 
that the writer whom I allude to expressly addressed 
himself to philosophical themes ; his riper powers have 
been dedicated (on very excusable and very intelligi- 
ble grounds, under the present direction of the pop- 
ular mind in England) to criticism and the fine arts. 
This reason apart, however, I doubt whether he is 
not rather to be considered an acute thinker than a 
subtle one. It is, besides, a great drawback on his 
mastery over philosophical subjects, that he has 
obviously not had the advantage of a regular scholas- 
tic education : he has not read Plato in his youth 
(which most likely was only his misfortune) but 
neither has he read Kant in his manhood (which is 
his fault). 



20 Zbc Confessions of 

the moral faculties as shall give him an 
inner eye and power of intuition for the 
vision and mysteries of human nature : that 
constitution of faculties, in short, which 
(among all the generations of men that from 
the beginning of time have deployed into 
life, as it were, upon this planet) our English, 
poets have possessed in the highest degrea 
— and Scottish^ professors in the lowest. 

I have often been asked how I first came 
to be a regular opium-eater ; and have suf- 
fered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my 
acquaintance, from being reputed to have 
brought upon myself all the sufferings 
which I shall have to record, by a long 
course of indulgence in this practice, purely 
for the sake of creating an artificial state 
of pleasurable excitement. This, however, 
is a misrepresentation of my case. True it 
is, that for nearly ten years I did oc- 
casionally take opium, for the sake of the 
exquisite pleasure it gave me ; but, so long 
as I took it with this view, I was effectually 
protected from all material bad conse- 

* I disclaim any allusion to existing professors, of 
whom indeed I know only one- 



an ^Engltsb ®pium==]£atcr* 21 

quences, by the necessity of interposing 
long intervals between the several acts of 
indulgence, in order to renew the pleasur- 
able sensations. It was not for the purpose 
of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain 
in the severest degree, that I first began to 
use opium as an article of daily diet. In 
the twenty-eighth year of my age, a most 
painful affection of the stomach, which I 
had first experienced about ten years be- 
fore, attacked me in great strength. This 
affection had originally been caused by the 
extremities of hunger, suffered in my boyish 
days. During the season of hope and re- 
dundant happiness which succeeded (that 
is, from eighteen to twenty-four) it had 
slumbered: for the three following years 
it. had revived at intervals ; and now, under 
unfavorable circumstances, from depression 
of spirits, it attacked me with violence that 
yielded to no remedies but opium. As the 
youthful sufferings which first produced 
this derangement of the stomach were in- 
teresting in themselves and in the circum- 
stances that attended them, I shall here 
briefly retrace them. 
My father died when I was about seven 



22 ^be Confe05fon0 of 

years o_d, and left me to the care of four 
guardiansc I was sent to various schools, 
great and small ; and was very early dis- 
tinguished for my classical attainments, 
especially for my knowledge of Greek. At 
thirteen I wrote Greek with ease ; and at 
fifteen my command of that language was so 
great, that I not only composed Greek verses 
in lyric meters, but would converse in 
Greek fluently, and without embarrassment 
— an accomplishment which I have not 
since met with in any scholar of my times^ 
and which, in my case, was owing to the 
practice of daily reading of the newspapers 
into the best Greek I could furnish extern-- 
pore ; for the necessity of ransacking my 
memory and invention for all sorts and com- 
binations of periphrastic expressions, as 
equivalents for modern ideas, images, rela- 
tions of things, etc., gave me a compass of 
diction which would never have been called 
out by a dull translation of moral essays, etc» 
*' That boy," said one of my masters, point- 
ing the attention of a stranger to me, " that 
boy could harangue an Athenian mob bet- 
ter than you or I could address an English 
one." He who honored me with this eulogy 



an JEwQliBb ©plums:}6atct» 23 

was a scholar, " and a ripe and good one," 
and, of all my tutors, was the only one 
whom I loved or reverenced. Unfortu- 
nately for me (and, as I afterward learned, 
to this worthy man's great indignation), I 
was transferred to the care, first of a block- 
head, who was in a perpetual panic lest I 
should expose his ignorance; and, finally, 
to that of a respectable scholar, at the head 
of a great school on an ancient foundation. 
This man had been appointed to liis situa- 
tion by College, Oxford ; and was a 

sound, well-built scholar, but (like most 
men whom I have known from that college) 
coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A miserable 
contrast he presented, in my eyes, to the 
Etonian brilliancy of my favorite master; 
and, besides, he could not disguise from my 
hourly notice the poverty and meagerness 
of his understanding. It is a bad thing for 
a boy to be, and know himself, far beyond 
his tutors, whether in knowledge or in 
power of mind. This was the case, so far 
as regarded knowledge at least, not with 
myself only ; for the two boys who jointly 
with myself composed the first form were 
better Grecians than the head-master, 



24 ^be Conte60ion0 ot 

though not more elegant scholars, nor at 
all more accustomed to sacrifice to the 
graces. When I first entered, I remem- 
ber that we read Sophocles ; and it was 
a constant matter of triumph to us, the 
learned triumvirate of the first form, to 
see our " Archididascalus " (as he loved to 
be called) conning our lesson before we 
went up, and laying a regular train, with 
lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and 
blasting (as it were) any diificulties he 
found in the choruses, whilst we never con- 
descended to open our books, until the mo- 
ment of going up, and were generally em- 
ployed in writing epigrams upon his wig, 
or some such important matter. My twa 
class-fellows were poor, and dependent, for 
their future prospects at the university, on 
the recommendation of the head-master; 
but I, who had a small patrimonial prop- 
erty, the income of which was sufficient to 
support me at college, wished to be sent 
thither immediately. I made earnest rep- 
resentations on the subject to my guard- 
ians, but all to no purpose. One, who was 
more reasonable, and had more knowledge 
of the world than the rest, lived at a dis- 



an iBmlieh ©pfum^Eater. 25 

tance ; two of the other three resigned all 
their authority into the hands of the fourth ; 
and this fourth, with whom I had to nego- 
tiate, was a worthy man, in his way, but 
haughty, obstinate, and intolerant of all op- 
position to his will. After a certain num- 
ber of letters and personal interviews, I 
found that I had nothing to hope for, not 
even a compromise of the matter, from 
my guardian : unconditional submission was 
what he demanded ; and I prepared myself, 
therefore, for other measures. Summer 
w^as now coming on with hasty steps, and 
my seventeenth birthday was fast approach- 
ing ; after which day I had sworn within 
myself that I would no longer be numbered 
among schoolboys. Money being what I 
chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman of high 
rank, who, though young herself, had 
known me from a child, and had latterly 
treated me with great distinction, request- 
ing that she would " lend " me five guineas. 
For upward of a week no answer came ; 
and I was beginning to despond, when at 
length a servant put into my hands a double 
letter, with a coronet on the seal. The 
letter was kind and obliging ; the fair writer 



2Q tlbe Conte66ion0 of 

was on the sea-coast, and in that way the 
delay had arisen ; she -inclosed double of 
what I had asked, and good-naturedly hinted 
that if I should never repay her, it would 
not absolutely ruin her. Now, then, I was 
prepared for my scheme : ten guineas, added 
to about two that I had remaining from 
my pocket-money, seemed to me sufficient 
for an indefinite length of time ; and afe 
that happy age, if no definite boundary can 
be assigned to one's power, the spirit of 
hope and pleasure makes it virtually in- 
finite. 

It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and, 
what cannot often be said of his remarks, 
it is a very feeling one) that we never do 
anything consciously for the last time (of 
things, that is, which we have long been in 
the habit of doing) without sadness of heart. 
This truth I felt deeply when 1 came to 

leave , a place which I did not love, and 

where I had not been happy. On the even- 
ing before I left forever, I grieved when 

the ancient and lofty school-room resounded 
with the evening service, performed for the 
last time in my hearing ; and at night, when 
the muster-roll of names was called over, 



an iBxxQliBh Oplum^Batcn ±7 

(as usual) was called first, I 
stepped forward, and passing the head- 
master, who was standing by, I bowed to 
him, and looked earnestly in his face, think- 
ing to myself, " He is old and infirm, and in 
this world I shall not see him again." I 
was right; I never did see him again, nor 
never shall. He looked at me complacently, 
smiled good-naturedly, returned my saluta- 
tion (or rather my valediction), and we 
parted (though he knew it not) forever. I 
could not reverence him intellectually ; but 
he had been uniformly kind to me, and 
had allowed m. many indulgences; and I 
grieved at the thought of the mortification 
I should infliot upon him. 

The mornin;^ came which was to launch 
me into the world, and from which my 
whole succeeding life has, in many important 
points, taken its coloring. I lodged in the 
head-master's house, and had been allowed, 
from my first entrance, the indulgence of a 
private room, which I used both as a sleep- 
ing-room and as a study. At half after 
three I rose, and gazed with deep emotion 

at the ancient towers of , "drest in 

earliest light," and beginning to crimson 



28 tTbe CorxtcsBions of 

with the radiant luster of a cloudless July 
morning. I was firm and immovable in my 
purpose, but yet agitated by anticipation of 
uncertain danger and troubles; and if I 
could have foreseen the hurricane, and per- 
fect hail-storm of affliction, which soon fell 
upon me, well might I have been agitated. 
To this agitation the deep peace of the 
morning presented an affecting contrast, 
and in some degree a medicine. The silence 
was more profound than that of midnight : 
and to me the silence of a summer morning- 
is more touching than all other silence, 
because, the light being broad and strong as 
that of noonday at other seasons of the 
year, it seems to differ from perfect day 
chiefly because man is not yet abroad ; and 
thus, the peace of nature, and of the in- 
nocent creatures of God, seems to be secure 
and deep, only so long as the presence of 
man, and his restless and unquiet spirit, are 
not there to trouble its sanctity. I dressed 
myself, took my hat and gloves, and lingered 
a little in the room. For the last year and 
a half this room had been my " pensive 
citadel : " here I had read and studied 
through all the hours of night j and, though 



an En0ll0b ®pi\xm:^iBntcx. 29 

true it was that, for the latter part of this 
time, I, who was framed for love and gentle 
affections, had lost my gayety and happi- 
ness, during the strife and fever of conten- 
tion with my guardian, yet, on the other 
hand, as a boy so passionately fond of books, 
and dedicated to intellectual pursuits, I 
could not fail to have enjoyed many happy 
:hours in the midst of general dejection. I 
wept as I looked round on the chair, hearth, 
writing-table, and other familiar objects, 
knowing too certainly that I looked upoa 
them for the last time. While I write this, 
it is eighteen years ago ; and yet, at this 
moment, I see distinctly, as if it were but 
yesterday, the lineaments and expressions 
of the object on which I fixed my parting 

gaze : it was a picture of the lovely , 

which hung over the mantelpiece ; the eyes 
and mouth of which were so beautiful, and 
the whole countenance so radiant with 
benignity and divine tranquillity, that I had 
a thousand times laid down my pen, or my 
l)ook, to gather consolation from it, as a 
devotee from his patron saint. While I was 

yet gazing upon it, the deep tones of 

clock proclaimed that it was four o'clock. 



30 TLbc Qontc66ion6 of 

I went up to the picture, kissed it, and then 
gently walked out, and closed the door 
forever ! 



So blended and intertwisted in this life 
are occasions of laughter and of tears, that 
I cannot yet recall, without smiling, an in- 
cident which occurred at that time, and 
which had nearly put a stop to the im- 
mediate execution of my plan. I had 2^ 
trunk of immense weight ; for, besides my 
clothes, it contained nearly all my library. 
The difficulty was to get this removed to 2t 
carrier's. My room was at an aerial eleva- 
tion in the house, and (what was worse) tha 
staircase which communicated with this 
angle of the building was accessible only by 
a gallery, which passed the head-master':: 
chamber door. I was a favorite witi". rJl V. 
servants; and knowing that any of them 
would screen me, and act confidentially, I: 
communicated my embarrassment to a. 
groom of the head-master's. The groom 
swore he would do anything I wished ; and 
when the time arrived, went upstairs to 
bring the trunk down. This I feared was 



an Bnglieb ©ptums^Eaten 31 

beyond the strength of any one man ; how- 
ever, the groom was a man 

Of Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear 
The weight of mightiest monarchies, 

and had a back as capacious as Salis- 
bury Plains. Accordingly, he persisted in 
iDringing down the trunk alone, while 
I stood waiting at the foot of the last flight, 
in anxiety for the event. For some time I 
heard him descending with slow and firm 
steps ; but, unfortunately, from his trepida- 
tion, as he drew near the dangerous quarter, 
within a few steps of the gallery, his foot 
slipped, and the mighty burden, falling from 
his shoulders, gained such increase of im- 
petus at each step of the descent, that, on 
reaching the bottom, it trundled, or rather 
leaped, right across, with the noise of twenty 
devils, against the verj^ bedroom door of the 
archididascalus. My first thought was, that 
all was lost, and that my only chance of exe- 
cuting a retreat was to sacrifice my baggage- 
However, on reflection, I determined to 
abide the issue. The groom was in the ut- 
most alarm, both on his own account and 
on mine, but, in spite of this, so irresistibly 



82 ' ZTbe Conteaelons ot 

had the sense of the ludicrous, in this un- 
happy contretemps^ taken possession of his 
fancy, that he sung out a long, loud, and 
canorous peal of laughter, that might have 
wakened the Seven Sleepers. At the sound 
of this resonant merriment within the very 
ears of insulted authority, I could not for- 
bear joining in it; subdued to this, not so 
much by the unhappy etourderie of the 
trunk, as by the effect it had upon the 
groom. We both expected, as a matter of 

course, that Dr. would sally out of his 

room ; for, in general, if but a mouse stirred, 
he sprung out like a mastiff from his kennel. 
Strange to say, however, on this occasion, 
when the noise of laughter had ceased, no 
sound, or rustling, even, was to be heard in 
the bedroom. Dr. had a painful com- 
plaint, which sometimes keeping him awake, 
made him sleep, perhaps, when it did come, 
the deeper. Gathering courage from the si- 
lence, the groom hoisted his burden again, 
and accomplished the remainder of his des- 
cent without accident. I waited until I saw 
the trunk placed on a wheelbarrow, and on 
its road to the carrier's ; then, " with Provi- 
dence my guide," I set off on foot, carrying 



an iBmliBb ©pfum^Eater. 3S 

a small parcel, with some articles of dress 
under my arm : a favorite English poet in 
one pocket ; and a small 12mo volume, con- 
taining about nine plays of Euripides, in the 
other. 

It had been my intention, originally, to 
proceed to Westmoreland, both from the 
love I bore to that county and on other per- 
sonal accounts. Accident, however, gave a. 
different direction to my wanderings, and I 
bent my steps toward North Wales. 

After wandering for some time in Den- 
bighshire, Merionethshire, and Caernarvon- 
shire, I took lodgings in a small, neat house 

in B . Here I might have stayed with 

great comfort for many weeks ; for provi- 
sions were cheap at B , from the scarcity 

cf other markets for the surplus products 
of a wide agricultural district. An acci- 
dent, however, in which, perhaps, no offense 
^Jvas designed, drove me out to wander 
again. I know not whether my reader may 
have remarked, but I have often remarked, 
that the proudest class of people in England 
(or, at any rate, the class whose pride is 
most apparent) are the families of bishops* 
Noblemen, and their children, carry about 
3 



34 Zbc Contentions of 

with them, in their very titles, a suflficient 
notification of their rank. Nay, their very 
names (and this applies also to the children 
of many untitled houses) are often, to the 
English ear, adequate exponents of high 
birth, or descent. Sackville, Manners, Fitz- 
roy, Paulet, Cavendish, and scores of others, 
tell their own tale. Such persons, there- 
fore, find everywhere a due sense of their 
claims already established, except among 
those who are ignorant of the w^orld by 
virtue of their own obscurity : " Not to 
know them argues one's self unknown.'* 
Their manners take a suitable tone and col- 
oring ; and for once that they find it nec- 
essary to impress a sense of their conse- 
quence upon others, they meet with a 
thousand occasions for moderating and 
tempering this sense by acts of courteous 
condescension. With the families of bish- 
ops it is otherwise ; with them it is all 
uphill work to make known their preten- 
sions, for the proportion of the Episcopal 
bench taken from noble families is not at 
any time very large ; and the succession to 
these dignities is so rapid, that the public 
ear seldom has time to become familiar v/i»th 



an j£nQlieh Qpinm^lB^tcx. 35 

them, unless where they are connected with 
some literary reputation. Hence it is that 
the children of bishops carry about with 
them an austere and repulsive air, indicative 
of claims not generally acknowledged— a 
eort of noli me tangere manner, nervously 
apprehensive of too familiar approach, and 
shrinking with the sensitiveness of a gouty 
man from all contact with the ol noXXot 
Doubtless, a powerful understanding, or 
imusual goodness of nature, will preserve 
a man from such weakness ; but, in general, 
the truth of my representation will be 
acknowledged ; pride, if not of deeper root 
in such families, appears, at least, more 
upon the surface of their manners. This 
spirit of manners naturally communicates 
itself to their domestics, and other depend- 
ents. Now, my landlady, had been a lady's- 
maid, or a nurse, in the family of the Bish- 
op of , and had but lately married 

away and " settled " (as such people express 

it) for life. In a little town like B , 

merely to have lived in the bishop's family 
conferred some distinction; and my good 
landlady had rather more than her share 
of the pride I have noticed on that score. 



36 XLbc Contcssions of 

What "my lord" said, and what "my 
lord" did — how useful he was in Parlia- 
ment, and how indispensable at Oxford — 
formed the daily burden of her talk. All 
this I bore very well ; for I Avas too good- 
natured to laugh in anybody's face, and I 
could make an ample allowance for the gar- 
rulity of an old servant. Of necessity, how- 
ever, I must have appeared in her eyes very 
inadequately impressed with the bishop's 
importance ; and, perhaps to punish me for 
my indifference, or, possibly, by accident, 
she one day repeated to me a conversation 
in which I was indirectly a party concerned. 
She had been to the palace to pay her re- 
spects to the family ; and, dinner being over, 
was summoned into the dining-room. In 
giving an account of her household economy 
she happened to mention that she had let 
her apartments. Thereupon the good bish- 
op (it seemed) had taken occasion to caution 
her as to her selection of inmates ; " for," 
said he, " you must recollect, Betty, that 
this place is inthe high-road to the Head; so 
that multitudes of Irish swindlers, running 
away from their debts into England, and of 
English swindlers, running away from their 



an iBmliBb ©pium=»Eatet» S7 

debts to the Isle of Man, are likely to take 
this place in their route." This advice was 
certainly not without reasonable grounds, 
but rather fitted to be stored up for Mrs. 
Betty's private meditations than specially re- 
ported to me. What followed, however, was 
somewhat worse : " Oh, my lord," answered 
my landlady (according to her own repre- 
sentation of the matter), "I really don'fc 
think this young gentleman is a swindler ; 
because — " " You don't think me a swin- 
dler ? " said I, interrupting her, in a tumult 
of indignation ; " for the future I shall 
spare you the trouble of thinking about it.'* 
And without delay I prepared for my de- 
parture. Some concessions the good woman 
seemed disposed to make ; but a harsh and 
contemptuous expression, which I fear thafe 
I applied to the learned dignitary himself, 
roused her indignation in turn ; and recon- 
ciliation then became impossible. I wa», 
indeed, greatly irritated at the bishop's hav- 
ing suggested any grounds of suspicion, 
however remotely, against a person whom 
he had never seen ; and I thought of letting 
him know my mind in Greek ; which, at the 
same time that it would furnish some pre- 



38 Zbc Confessions of 

sumption that I was no swindler, would 
also (I hoped) compel the bishop to reply in 
the same language ; in which case I doubted 
not to make it appear that if I was not so 
rich as his lordship, I was a far better Gre- 
cian. Calmer thoughts, however, drove this 
boyish design out of my mind ; for I consid- 
ered that the bishop was in the right to 
counsel an old servant ; that he could not 
have designed that his advice should be re- 
ported to me ; and that the same coarseness 
of mind which had led Mrs. Betty to repeat 
the advice at all might have colored it in a 
way more agreeable to her own style of 
thinking than to the actual expressions of 
the worthy bishop. 

I left the lodging the very same hour ; and 
this turned out a very unfortunate occur- 
rence for me, because, living henceforward 
at inns, I was drained of my money very 
rapidly. In a fortnight I was reduced to 
short allowance ; that is, I could allow my- 
self only one meal a day. From the keen 
appetite produced by constant exercise and 
mountain air, acting on a youthful stomach, 
I soon began to suffer greatly on this slen- 
der regimen; for the single meal which I 



an Englisb ©pium«]Eater. 39 

could venture to order was coffee or tea. 
Even this, however, was at length with- 
drawn ; and afterward, so long as I remained 
in Wales, I subsisted either on black- 
berries, hips, haws, etc., or on the casual 
hospitalities which I now and then received 
in return for such little services as I had 
an opportunity of rendering-. Sometimes I 
wrote letters of business for cottagers who 
happened to have relatives in Liverpool or 
in London ; more often I wrote love-letters 
to their sweethearts for young women who 
had lived as servants in Shrewsbury, or 
other towns on the English border. On all 
such occasions I gave great satisfaction to 
my humble friends, and was generally- 
treated with hospitality; and once in par- 
ticular, near the village of Llan-y-styndwr 
(or some such name), in a sequestered parfc 
of Merionethshire, I was entertained for up- 
ward of three days by a family of young 
people, with an affectionate and fraternal 
kindness that left an impression upon my 
heart not yet impaired. The family con- 
sisted, at that time, of four sisters and three 
brothers, all grown up, and remarkable for 
elegance and delicacy of manners. So much 



40 XTbe ContC65ion6 of 

beauty, and so much native good breeding 
and refinement I do not remember to have 
seen before or since in any cottage, except 
once or twice in Westmoreland and Devon- 
shire. They spoke Engiisli, an accomplish- 
ment not often met with in so many 
members of one family, especially in vil- 
lages remote from the high-road. Here I 
wrote, on my first introduction, a letter 
about prize-money for one of the brothers, 
who had served on board an English man- 
of-war ; and, more privately, two love-letters 
for two of the sisters. They were both 
interestmg-looking girls, and one of un- 
common loveliness. In the midst of their 
confusion and blushes, while dictating, or 
ratter giving me general instructions, it 
did aot require any great penetration to dis- 
cover that what they wished was that their 
letters should be as kind as was consistent 
with proper maidenly pride. I contrived so 
to temper my expressions as to reconcile 
the gratification of both feelings ; and they 
were as much pleased with the way in 
which I had expressed their thoughts, as 
(in their simplicity) they were astonished 
at my having so readily discovered them. 



an iBnglisb ©plum=:eatet. 41 

The reception one meets with from the 
women of a family generally determines the 
tenor of one's whole entertainment. In 
this case I had discharged my confidential 
duties as secretary so much to the general 
satisfaction, perhaps also amusing them 
with my conversation, that I was pressed 
to stay with a cordiality which I had little 
inclination to resist. I slept with the 
brothers, the only unoccupied bed standing 
in the apartment of the young Avomen : but 
in all other points they treated me with a 
respect not usually paid to purses as light 
as mine ; as if my scholarship were suffi- 
cient evidence that I was of " gentle blood.'^ 
Thus I lived with them for three days, and 
great part of a fourth ; and, from the un- 
diminished kindness which they continued 
*io show me, I believe I might have stayed 
with them up to this time if their power 
had corresponded with their wishes. On the 
last morning, however, I perceived upon 
their countenances, as they sat at breakfast^ 
the expression of some unpleasant communi- 
cation which was at hand ; and soon after^ 
one of the brothers explained to me that 
their parents had gone, the day before my 



42 ilbe Contc66ion6 ot 

arrival, to an annual meeting of Methodists, 
held at Caernarvon, and were that day ex- 
pected to return ; " and if they should not 
be so civil as they ought to be," he begged, on 
the part of all the young people, that I 
would not take it amiss. The parents re- 
turned with churlish faces, and '' Dym 
Sassenach'''' {no English) in answer to all 
my addresses. I saw how matters stood ; 
and so, taking an affectionate leave of my 
kind and interesting young hosts, I went 
my way. For, though they spoke warmly 
to their parents in my behalf, and often ex- 
cused the manner of the old people, by 
saying that it was " only their way," yet I 
easily understood that my talent for writ- 
ing love-letters would do as little to recom- 
mend me with two grave sexagenarian 
Welsh Methodists as my Greek Sapphics 
or Alcaics ; and what had been hospitality 
when offered to me with the gracious court- 
esy of my young friends w^ould become 
charity when connected with the harsh de- 
meanor of these old people. Certainly, Mr. 
Shelley is right in his notions about old age : 
unless powerfully counteracted by all sorts 
of opposite agencies, it is a miserable cor- 



an Engltsb ©plum»fiatet. 43 

rupter and blighter to the genial charities 
of the human heart. 

Soon after this, I contrived, by means 
which I must omit for want of room, to 
transfer myself to London. And now be- 
gan the latter and fiercer stage of my long 
sufferings ; without using a disproportionate 
expression, I might say, of my agony. For 
I now suffered, for upward of sixteen weeks, 
the physical anguish of hunger in various 
degrees of intensity ; but as bitter, perhaps, 
as ever any human being can have suffered 
who has survived it. I would not need- 
lessly harass my reader's feelings by a de- 
tail of all that I endured ; for extreunties 
such as these, under any circumstances of 
heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be con- 
templated, even in description, without a 
rueful pity that is painful to the natural 
goodness of the human heart. Let it suf- 
fice, at least on this occasion, to say, that a 
few fragment, of bread from the breakfast- 
table of one individual (who supposed me to 
be ill, but did not know of my being in utter 
want), and these at uncertain intervals, 
constituted my whole support. During the 
former part of my sufferings (that is, gen- 



44 Zbc ContCBBione of 

erally in Wales, and always for the first 
two months in London), I was houseless, 
and very seldom slept under a roof. To 
this constant exposure to the open air I 
ascribe it mainly that I did not sink under 
my torments. Latterly, however, when cold 
and more inclement weather came on, and 
when from the length of my sufferings, I 
had begun to sink into a more languishmg 
condition, it was, no doubt, fortunate for me 
that the same person to whose breakfast- 
table I had access allowed me to sleep in a 
large, unoccupied house, of which he was 
tenant. Unoccupied, I call it, for there was 
no household or establishment in it ; nor 
any furniture, indeed, except a table and a 
few chairs. But I found, on taking posses- 
sion of my new quarters, that the house 
already contained one single inmate, a poor, 
friendless child, apparent'^y ten years old ; 
but she seemed hunger-bitten ; and suffer- 
ings of that sort often make children look 
older than they are. From this forlorn 
child I learned that she had slept and lived 
there alone for some time before I came ; 
and great joy the poor creature expressed 
when she found that I was in future to be 



an Enalf^b ®plum=Eaten 45 

her companion through the hours of dark- 
ness. The house was large ; and, from the 
want of furniture, the noise of the rats made 
a prodigious echoing on the spacious staircase 
and hall ; and, amid the real fleshly ills of 
cold, and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child 
had found leisure to suffer still more (it ap- 
peared) from the self-created one of ghosts. 
I promised her protection a^^ainst all ghosts 
whatsoever; but, alas! I could offer her 
no other assistance. We lay upon the floor, 
with a bundle of cursed law papers for a 
pillow, but with no other covering than a 
sort of large horseman's cloak ; afterward, 
however, we discovered, in a garret, an old 
sofa-cover, a small piece of rug, and some 
fragments of other articles, which added a 
little to our warmth. The poor child crept 
close to me for warmth, and for security 
against her ghostly enemies. When I was 
not more than usually 11, T took her into 
my arms, so that, in gen ral, she was toler- 
ably warm, nd often slept wh:n I could 
not ; for, during the last two months of my 
sufferings, I slept much in the day-time, 
and was apt to fall into transient dozings at 
all hours. But my sleep distressed me 



46 TTbe Confessions of 

more than my watching; for, besides the 
tumultuouness of my dreams (which were 
only not so awful as those which I shall 
have to describe hereafter as produced by 
opium), my sleep was never more than what 
is called dog-sleep ; so that I could hear my- 
self moaning, and was often, as it seemed to 
me, awakened suddenly by my own voice ; 
and about this time a hideous sensation be- 
gan to haunt me as soon as I fell into a 
slumber, which has since returned upon me 
at different periods of my life — namely, a 
sort of twitching (I know not where, but 
apparently about the region of the stomach), 
which compelled me violently to throw out 
my feet for the sake of relieving it. This 
sensation coming on as soon as I began to 
sleep, and the effort to relieve it constantly 
awaking me, at length I slept only from ex- 
haustion ; and, from increasing weakness 
(as I said before), I was constantly falling 
asleep, and constantly awaking. Meantime, 
the master of the house sometimes came in 
upon us suddenly, and very early; some- 
times not till ten o'clock ; sometimes not at 
all. He was in constant fear of bailiffs; 
improving on the plan of Cromwell, every 



an Bngllab ©ptums^Eater, 47 

night he slept in a different quarter of Lon- 
don ; and I observed that he never failed to 
examine, through a private window, the ap- 
pearance of those who knocked at the door, 
before he would allow it to be opened. He 
breakfasted alone : indeed, his tea equipage 
would hardly have admitted of his hazard- 
ing an invitation to a second person, any- 
more than the quantity of esculent material^ 
which, for the most part, was little more 
than a roll, or a few biscuits, which he had 
bought on his road from the place where he 
had slept. Or, if he had asked a party, as 
I once learnedly and facetiously observed to 
him, the several members of it must have 
stood in the relation to one another (not sat 
in any relation whatever) of succession, as 
the metaphysicians have it, and not of 
coexistence ; in the relation of parts of time, 
and not of the parts of space. During his 
breakfast, I generally contrived a reason for 
lounging in; and, with an air of as much 
indifference as I could assume, took up such 
fragments as he had left — sometimes, in- 
deed, there were none at all. In doing this, 
I committed no robbery, except upon the 
man himself, who was thus obliged (I 



48 ^be Gonte66ion0 or 

believe), now and then, to send out at noon 
for an extra biscuit; for, as to the poor 
child, she was never admitted into his study 
(if I may give that name to his chief deposi- 
tory of parchments, law- writings, etc.) ; that 
room was to her the Bluebeard room of 
the house, being regularly locked on his de- 
parture to dinner, about six o'clock, which 
usually was his final departure for the night. 
Whether this child was an illegitimate 

daughter of Mr. , or only a servant, I 

could not ascertain; she did not herself 
know ; but certainly she was treated al- 
together as a menial servant. No sooner 

did Mr. make his appearance, than she 

-went below stairs, brushed his shoes, coat, 
etc. ; and, except when she was summoned to 
run an errand, she never emerged from the 
dismal Tartarus of the kitchens to the up- 
per air until my welcome knock at night 
called up her little tremblmg footsteps to 
the front door. Of her life during the day- 
time, however, I knew little but what I 
gathered from her own account at night ; 
for as soon as the hours of business com- 
menced I saw that my absence would be 
acceptable; and, in general, therefore. I 



an iBnQlieb ©ptum=}£aten 49 

went off and sat in the parks, or elsewhere, 
until nightfall. 

But who, and what, meantime, was the 
master of the house himself? Reader, he 
was one of those anomalous practitioners in 
lower departments of the law, who — what 
shall I say? — who, on prudential reasons, 
or from necessity, deny themselves all the 
indulgence in the luxury of too delicate a 
conscience (a periphrasis which might be 
abridged considerably, but that I leave to 
the reader's taste) ; in many walks of life, a 
conscience is a more expensive incumbrance 
than a wife or a carriage ; and just as peo- 
ple talk of " laying down " their carriages, 

so I suppose my friend, Mr. , had " laid 

down " his conscience for a time ; meaning, 
doubtless, to resume it as soon as he could 
afford it. The inner economy of such -a 
man's daily life would present a most 
strange picture, if I could allow myself to 
amuse the reader at his expense. Even 
with my limited opportunities for observing 
what went on, I saw many scenes of London 
intrigues, and complex chicanery, " cycle 
and epicycle, orb in orb," at which I some- 
times smile to this day, and at which I 
4 



50 XLbc ConfcsBlorxB of 

smiled then, in spite of my misery. My 
situation, however, at that time, gave me 
little experience, in my own person, of any 

qualities in Mr. 's character but such as 

did him honor; and of his whole strange 
composition, I must forget everything but 
that toward me he was obliging, and, to the 
extent of his power, generous. 

That power was not, indeed, very exten- 
sive. However, in common with the rats, 
I sat rent free ; and as Dr. Johnson has 
"recorded that he never but once in his life 
had as much wall-fruit as he could eat, so 
let me be grateful that, on that single oc- 
casion, I had as large a choice of apart- 
ments in a London mansion as I could pos- 
sibly desire. Except the Bluebeard room, 
which the poor child believed to be haunted, 
all others, from the attics to the cellars, 
were at our service. " The world was all 
before us," and we pitched our tent for the 
night in any spot we chose. This house I 
have already described as a large one. It 
stands in a conspicuous situation, and in a 
well-known part of London. Many of my 
readers will have passed it, I doubt not, 
within a few hours of reading this. For 



au En0li6b ©pium:=:6atet. 51 

myself, I never fail to visit it when business 
draws me to London. About ten o'clock 
this very night, August 15th, 1821, being^ 
my birthday, I turned aside from my even- 
ing walk, down Oxford Street, purposely to 
take a glance at it. It is now occupied by 
a respectable family, and, by the lights in the 
front drawing-room, I observed a domes- 
tic party assembled, perhaps, at tea, and 
apparently cheerful and gay ; marvelous 
contrast, in my eyes, to the darkness, cold, 
silence, and desolation of that same house 
eighteen years ago, when its nightly occu- 
pants were one famishing scholar and a 
neglected child. Her, by the bye, in after 
years, I vainly endeavored to trace. Apart 
from her situation, she was not what would 
be called an interesting child. She was 
neither pretty, nor quick in understanding, 
nor remarkably pleasing in manners. But, 
thank God, even in those years I needed 
not the embellishments of novel accessories 
to conciliate my affections. Plain human 
nature, in its humblest and most homely 
apparel, was enough for me ; and I loved 
the child because she was my partner in 
wretchedness. If she is now living, she is 



52 ^be ContcssiorxB of 

probably a mother, with children of hei 
own ; but, as I have said, I could never trace 
her. 

This I regret ; but another person there 
was, at that time, Avhom I have since sought 
to trace with far deeper earnestness, and 
with far deeper sorrow at my failure. This 
person was a young woman, and one of that 
unhappy class who subsist upon the wages 
of prostitution. I feel no shame, nor have 
any reason to feel it, in avowing that I was 
then on familiar terms with many women, 
in that unfortunate condition. The reader 
needs neither smile at this avowal, nor 
frown ; for, not to remind my classical 
readers of the old Latin proverb, " jSi7ie 
Cerere^'' etc., it may well be supposed that 
in the existing state of my purse my con- 
nection with such women could not have 
been an impure one. But the truth is, that 
at no time of my life have I been a person 
to hold myself polluted by the touch or ap- 
proach of any creature that wore a human 
shape. On the contrary, from my very ear- 
liest youth, it has been my pride to con- 
verse familiarly, more Socratico^ with all 
human beings — man, woman, and child — 



an }En0ll0b ©plum^Bater* 5^ 

that chance might fling in my way : a prac- 
tice which is friendly to the knowledge of 
human nature, to good feelings, and to 
that frankness of address which becomes 
a man who would be thought a philosopher ; 
for a philosopher should not see with the 
eyes of the poor limitary creature calling- 
himself a man of the world, and filled with 
narrow and self-regarding prejudices of 
birth and education, but should look upon 
himself as a catholic creature, and as 
standing in an equal relation to high 
and low, to educated and uneducated, to 
the guilty and the innocent. Being myself 
at that time, of necessity, a peripatetic, or 
a walker of the streets, I naturally fell in^ 
more frequently, with those female per- 
ipatetics, who are technically called street- 
walkers. Many of these women had oc- 
casionally taken my part against watchmen 
who wished to drive me ofl" the steps of 
houses where I was sitting. But one among 
them — the one on whose account I have at 
all introduced this subject— yet no ! let me 

not class thee, oh, noble-minded Ann , 

with that order of women ; let me find, if it 
be possible, some gentler name to designate 



54 Cbe Confeseions ot 

the condition of her to whose bounty and 
compassion — ministering to my necessities 
when all the world had forsaken me — I owe 
it that I am at this time alive. For many 
weeks I had walked, at nights, with this 
poor friendless girl, up and down Oxford 
Street, or had rested with her on steps and 
under the shelter of porticoes. She could 
not be so old as myself : she told me, indeed, 
that she had not completed her sixteenth 
year. By such questions as my interest 
about her prompted, I had gradually drawn 
forth her simple history. Hers was a case 
of ordinary occurrence (as I have since had 
reason to think), and one in which, if 
London beneficence had better adapted its 
arrangements to meet it, the power of the 
law might oftener be interposed to protect 
and to avenge. But the stream of London, 
charity flows in a channel which, though 
deep and mighty, is yet noiseless and under- 
ground ; not obvious or readily accessible 
to poor, houseless wanderers ; and it can- 
not be denied that the outside air and frame- 
work of London society is harsh, cruel, and 
repulsive. In any case, however, I saw that 
part of her injuries might easily have been 



an jBrxQlieb ©pfum^iEaten 55 

redressed ; and I urged her often and ear- 
nestly to lay her complaint before a magis- 
trate. Friendless as she was, I assured her 
that she would meet with immediate atten- 
tion ; and that English justice, which was 
no respecter of persons, would speedily and 
amply avenge her on the brutal ruflftan who 
had plundered her little property. She 
promised me often that she w^ould ; but she 
delayed taking the steps I pointed out, from 
time to time ; for she w^as timid and dejected 
to a degree which showed how deeply sor- 
row had taken hold of her young heart ; 
and perhaps she thought justly that the 
most upright judge and the most righteous 
tribunals could do nothing to repair her 
heaviest wrongs. Something, however, 
would perhaps have been done ; for it had 
been settled between us, at length — but, un- 
happily, on the very last time but one that 
I was ever to see her — that in a day or two 
we should speak on her behalf. This little 
service it was destined, however, that I 
should never realize. Meantime, that which 
she rendered to me, and which was greater 
than I could ever have repaid her, was this : 
One night, when we were pacing slowly 



56 Zbc Confceslcne of 

along Oxford Street, and after a day when I 
had felt unusually ill and faint, I requested 
her to turn off with me into Soho Square. 
Thither we Vv^ent ; and we sat down on the 
steps of a house, which to this hour I never 
pass without a pang of grief, and an inner 
act of homage to the spirit of that un- 
happy girl, in memory of the noble act which, 
she there performed. Suddenly, as we sat, 
I grew much worse. I liad been leaning my 
head against her bosom, and all at once 
I sunk from her arms and fell backward 
on the steps. From the sensations I then 
had, I felt an inner conviction of the 
liveliest kind, that without some powerful 
and reviving stinuilus I should eitlier have 
died on the spot, or should, at least, have sunk 
to a point of exhaustion from which all re- 
ascent, under my friendless circumstances, 
would soon have become hopeless. Then it 
was, at this crisis of my fate, that my 
poor orplian companion, who had herself 
met with little but injuries in this world, 
stretched out a saving hand to me. Utter- 
ing a cry of terror, but without a mo- 
ment's delay, she ran oft' mto Oxford Street, 
and in less time than could be imagined 



p''''if?iiiiii 




iiiipteii __.., 



Uttering a cry of terror, but without a moment's 
delay, she ran off into Oxford Street." 



an jEwQlieb ®plums=Eater» 57 

returned to me with a glass of port wine and 
spices, that acted upon my empty stomach 
(which at that time would have rejected 
all solid food) withan instantaneous power of 
restoration ; and for this glass the generous 
girl, without a murmur, paid out of her own 
humble purse, at a time, be it remembered, 
when she had scarcely wherewithal to pur* 
€hase the bare necessaries of life, and when 
she could have no reason to expect that I 
should ever be able to reimburse her. Oh, 
youthful benefactress ! how often, in succeed- 
ing years, standing in solitary places, and 
thinking of thee with grief of heart and 
perfect love— how often have I wished that, 
as in ancient times the curse of a father was 
beUeved to have a supernatural power, and 
to pursue its object with a fatal necessity of 
self-fulfillment— even so the benediction of a 
heart oppressed with gratitude might have a 
like prerogative ; might have power given to 
it from above to chase, to haunt, to waylay, 
to overtake, to pursue thee into the central 
darkness of a London brothel, or (if it were 
possible) into the darkness of the grave, 
there to awaken thee with an authentic 



58 ^be Conte66ion6 ot 

message of peace and forgiveness, and of 
final reconciliation! 

I do not often weep ; for not only do my 
thoughts on subjects connected with the 
chief interests of man daily, nay, hourly, 
descend a thousand fathoms " too deep for 
tears ; " not only does the sternness of my 
habits of thought present an antagonism to 
the feelings which prompt tears— wanting, 
of necessity, to those who, being protected 
usually by their levity from any tendency 
to meditative sorrow, would, by that same 
levity, be made incapable of resisting it on 
any casual access of such feehngs ; but also, 
I believe, that all minds which have con- 
templated such objects as deeply as I have 
done, must, for their own protection from 
utter despondency, have early encouraged 
and cherished some tranquillizing belief as 
to the future balances and the hieroglyphic 
meanings of human sufferings. On these 
accounts I am cheerful to this hour ; and as 
I have said, I do not often weep. Yet some 
feelings, though not deeper or more passion- 
ate, are more tender than others ; and often, 
when I walk, at this time, in Oxford Street, 
by dreamy lamp-light, and hear those airs 



an Englisb ®pium=Eater» 59 

played on a barrel organ which years ago 
solaced me and my dear companion (as I 
must always call her), I shed tears, and 
muse with myself at the mysterious dis- 
pensation which so suddenly and so critically 
separated us forever. How it happened, the 
reader will understand from what remains 
of this introductory narration. 

Soon after the period of the last incident I 
have recorded, I met, in Albemarle Street, a 
gentleman of his late Majesty's household. 
Tills gentleman had received hospitahties, 
on different occasions, from my family; 
and he challenged me upon the strength 
of my family likeness. I did not attempt 
any disguise; I answered his questions 
ingenuously, and, on his pledging his word 
of honor that he would not betray me to 
my guardians, I gave him an address to 
my friend, the attorney. The next day I 
received from him a ten-pound bank-note. 
The letter inclosing it was dehvered, with 
other letters of business, to the attorney; 
but, though his look and manner informed 
me that he suspected its contents, he gave 
it up to me honorably and without demur. 
This present, from the particular service 



60 trbe Confessions of 

to which it was applied, leads me naturally 
to speak of the purpose which had allured 
me up to London, and which I had been (to 
use a forensic word) soliciting from the first 
day of my arrival in London to that of my 
final departure. 

In so mighty a world as London, it will 
surprise my readers that I should not have 
found some means of staving off the last 
extremities of penury; and it will strike 
them that two resources, at least, must have 
been open to me, namely, either to seek assist- 
ance from the friends of my family, or to turn, 
my youthful talents and attainments into 
some channel of pecuniary emolument. As 
to the first course, I may observe, generally, 
that what I dreaded beyond all other evils 
was the chance of being reclaimed by my 
guardians ; not doubting that whatever 
power the law gave them would have been 
enforced against me to the utmost ; that is, 
to the extremity of forcibly restoring me to 
the school which I had quitted ; a restora- 
tion which, as it would, in my eyes, have 
been a dishonor, even if submitted to volun- 
tarily, could not fail, when extorted from 
me in contempt and defiance of my own 



an Englt6b ©piums=Baten 61 

wishes and efforts, to have been a humilia- 
tion worse to me than death, and which 
would indeed have terminated in death. I 
was, therefore, shy enough of applying for 
assistance even in those quarters where I 
was sure of receiving it, at the risk of 
furnishing my guardians with any clew for 
recovering me. But, as to London in par- 
ticular, though doubtless my father had in 
his life-time had many friends there, yet 
(as ten years had passed since his death) I 
remembered few of them even by name; 
and never having seen London before, 
except once for a few hours, I knew not the 
address of even those few. To this mode 
cf gaining help, therefore, in part the diflS- 
culty, but much more the paramount fear 
"which I have mentioned, habitually indis- 
posed me. In regard to the other mode, I 
now feel half inclined to join my reader in 
wondering that I should have overlooked it. 
As a corrector of Greek proofs (if in no 
other way), I might, doubtless, have gained 
enough for my slender wants. Such an 
office as this I could have discharged with 
an exemplary and punctual accuracy that 
would soon have gained me the confidence 



62 XLbe Confe06ion5 of 

of my employers. But it must not be for- 
gotten that, even for such an office as this, 
it was necessary that I should first of all 
have an introduction to some respectable 
publisher ; and this I had no means of ob- 
taining. To say the truth, however, it had 
never once occurred to me to think of 
literary labors as a source of profit. No 
mode sufficiently speedy of obtaining money 
had ever occurred to me but that of borrow- 
ing it on the strength of my future claims 
and expectations. This mode I sought by 
every avenue to compass ; and among other 
persons I applied to a Jew ^ named D . 

* At this period (autumn of 1856), when thirty, 
five years have elapsed since the first publication of 
these memoirs, reasons of delicacy can no longer 
claim respect for concealing the Jew's name, or at 
least the name which he adopted in his dealings with 
the Gentiles. I say, therefore, without scruple, that 
the name was Dell ; and some years later it was one 
of the names that came before the House of Com- 
mons in connection with something or other (I have 
long smce forgotten what) growing out of the par- 
liamentary movement against the Duke of York in 
reference to Mrs. Clark, etc. Like all the other 

t To this same Jew, by the way, some eighteen 
months afterward, I applied again on the same busi- 



an iBngliBb ®pium=::6aten 65 

To this Jew, and to other advertising 
money-lenders (some of wliom were, I be- 
lieve, also Jews), I had introduced myself, 
with an account of my expectations ; which 
account, on examining my father's will at 
Doctor's Commons, they had ascertained to 



Jews with whom I have had negotiations, he was 
frank and honorable in his mode of conducting busi- 
ness. What h^ promised, he performed ; and if his 
terms were high, as turally they could not but be^ 
to cover his risks, he avowed tliem from the first. 

ness ; and, dating at that time from a respectable col- 
lege, I was fortunate enough to gain his serious atten- 
tion to my proposals. My necessities had not arisen 
from any extravagance or youthful levities (these, my 
habits and the nature of my pleasures raised me far 
above), but simply from the vindictive malice of my 
guardian, who, when he found himself no longer able 
to prevent me from going to the university, had, as a 
parting token of his good nature, refused to sign an 
order for granting me a shilling beyond the allow- 
ance made to me at school, namely, one hundred 
pounds per annum. Upon this sum, it was, in 
my time, barely possible to have lived in college; 
and not possible to a man who, though above the 
paltry affectation of ostentatious disregard for money, 
and without any expensive tastes, confided, never- 
theless, rather too much in servants, and did not de- 
light in the petty details of minute economy. I sooa^ 



64 XTbe Contesetons ot 

be correct. The person there mentioned as 

the second son of was found to have all 

the claims (or more than all) that I had stated ; 
but one question still remained, which the 
faces of the Jews pretty significantly sug- 
gested — was I that person? This doubt 
had never occurred to me as a possible one ; 
I had rather feared, whenever my Jewish 
friends scrutinized me keenly, that I might 
be too well known to be that person, and 
that some scheme might be passing in their 
minds for entrapping me and selling me to 

therefore, became embarrassed ; - !, -:t length, after 
a most voluminous negotiation with the Jew (some 
parts of which, if I had leisure to rehearse them, 
would greatly amuse my readers), I was put in pos- 
session of the sum I xsked for, on the "regular" 
terms of paying the Jew seventeen and a half per 
cent, by way of annuity on all the money furnished ; 
Israel, on his part, graciously resuming no more than 
about ninety guineas of the said money, on account 
of an attorney's bill, (for what services, to whom 
rendered, and when — whether at the siege of Jeru- 
salem, at the building of the Second Temple, or on 
some earlier occasion — I have not yet been able to 
discover). How many perches this bill measured I 
really forget ; but I still keep it in a cabinet of nat- 
ural curiosities, and some time or other I believe I 
ehall present it to the British Musuem. 



an iBmliBb ©pfum=Batet. 65 

my guardians. It was strange to me to find 
my own self, materialiter considered (so I 
expressed it, for I doted on logical accuracy 
of distinctions), accused, or at least sus- 
pected, of counterfeiting my own self, 
formaliter considered. However, to satisfy 
their scruples, I took the only course in my 
power. While I Avas in Wales, I had re- 
ceived various letters from young friends : 
these I produced — for I carried them con- 
stantly in my pocket — being, indeed, by this 
time, almost the only relics of my personal 
incumbrances (excepting the clothes I wore), 
which I had not in one way or other disposed 
of. Most of these letters were from the 

Earl of , who was, at that time, my chief 

^or rather only) confidential friend. These 
letters were dated from Eton. I had also 

6ome from the Marquis of , his father^ 

who, though absorbed in agricultural pur- 
suits, yet having been an Etonian himself, 
and as good a scholar as a nobleman needs 
to be, still retained an affection for classical 
studies and for youthful scholars. He had, 
accordingly, from the time that I was fifteen, 
corresponded with me ; sometimes upon the 
great improvements which he had made, or 
5 



66 Cbe Confessfons of 

was meditating, in the counties of M 

and Si , since I had been there; some 

times upon the merits of a Latin poet ; at 
other times suggesting subjects to me on 
which he wished me to write verses. 

On reading the letters, one of my Jewish 
friends agreed to furnish two or three 
hundred pounds on my personal security, 
provided I could p "^suade the young earl — 
who was, by the way, not older than my- 
self — to guarantee the payment on our 
coming of age : the Jew's final object being, 
as I now suppose, not the trifling profit he 
could expect to make by me, but the pros- 
pect of establishing a connection with my 
noble friend, whose immense expectations 
were well known to him. In pursuance of 
this proposal on the part of the Jew, about 
eight or nine days after I had received the 
ten pounds, I prepared to go down to Eton, 
Nearly three pounds of the money I had 
given to my money-lending fiiend, on his 
alleging that the stamps must be bought, in 
order that the writings might be prepared 
while I was away from London. I thought 
in my heart that he was lying ; but I did 
not wish to give him any excuse for charg- 



an EtiflliBb ©piumssEater^ 67 

ing his own delays upon me. A smaller 
sum I had given to my friend the attorney 
(who was connected with the money-lenders 
as their lawyer), to which, indeed, he was 
entitled for his unfurnished lodgings. 
About fifteen shillings I had employed in 
re-establishing (though in a very humble 
way) my dress. Of the remainder, I gave 
one quarter to Ann, meaning, on my re- 
turn, to have divided with her whatever 
might remain. These arrangements made, 
soon after six o'clock, on a dark winter 
evening, I set off, accompanied by Ann, to- 
ward Piccadilly; for it was my intention 
to go down as far as Salt Hill on the Bath 
or Bristol mail. Our course lay through a 
part of the town which has now all dis- 
appeared, so that I can no longer retrace 
its ancient boundaries : Swallow Street, I 
think it was called. Having time enough 
before us, however, we bore away to the 
left, until we came into Golden Square: 
there, near the corner of Sherrard Street, 
we sat down, not wishing to part in the 
tumult and blaze of Piccadilly. I had told 
her of my plans some time before; nud now 
I assured her again that she should share 



t)8 ^be Contesstona of 

in my good fortune, if I met with any; 
and that I would never forsake her, as soon 
as I had power to protect lier. This I fully 
intended, as much from inclination as from 
a sense of duty ; for, setting aside gratitude, 
which, in any case, must have made me her 
debtor for life, I loved her as affectionately 
as if she had been my sister ; and at this 
moment with sevenfold tenderness, from 
pity at witnessing her extreme dejection. 
I had, apparently more reason for dejection, 
because I was leaving the savior of my life ; 
yet I, considering the shock my health had 
received, was cheerful and full of hope. 
She, on the contrary, who was parting with 
one who had had little means of serving her, 
except by kindness and brotherly treatment, 
was overcome by sorrow ; so that, when I 
kissed her at our final farewell, she put her 
arms about my neck, and wept, without 
speaking a word. I hoped to return in a 
week at furthest, and I agreed with her that 
on the fifth night from that, and every night 
afterward, she should wait for me, at six 
o'clock, near the bottom of Great Titchfield 
Street, which had been our customary haven, 
as it were, of rendezvous, to prevent Our 



an ]En0li9b ©piums:j£ater^ 69 

missing each other in the great Mediter- 
ranean of Oxford Street. This, and other 
measures of precaution, I took : one, only, I 
forgot. She had either never told me, or 
(as a matter of no great interest) I had for- 
gotten, her surname. It is a general prac- 
tice, indeed, with girls of humble rank in her 
unhappy condition, not (as novel-reading 
women of higher pretensions) to style 
themselves 3Iiss Douglas, Miss Montague^ 
etc., but simply by their Christian names, 
Mary, Jane, Frances, etc. Her sur- 
name, as the surest means of tracing 
her, I ought not to have inquired; but 
the truth is, having no reason to think that 
our meeting could, in consequence of a short 
interruption, be more diflBcult or uncertain 
than it had been for so many weeks, I had 
scarcely for a moment adverted to it as 
necessary, or placed it among my memo- 
randa against this parting interview; and 
my final anxieties being spent in comforting 
her with hopes, and in pressing upon her 
the necessity of getting some medicine for a 
violent cough and hoarseness with which 
she was troubled, I wholly forgot it until it 
was too late to recall her. 



70 Zbc Contceeions of 

It was past eight o'clock when I reached 
the Gloucester Coffee House, and the Bi'istol 
Mail being on the point of going off, I 
mounted on the outside. The fine fluent 
motion ^' of this mail soon laid me asleep. 
It is somewhat remarkable that the first 
•easy or refreshing sleej) which I had en- 
joyed for some months was on the outside 
of a mail-coach — a bed which, at this day, I 
find rather an uneasy one. Connected with 
this sleep was a little incident which served, 
as hundreds of others did at that time, to 
convince me how easily a man, who has 
never been in any great distress, may pass 
through life without knowing, in his own 
person, at least, anything of the possible 
goodness of the human heart, or, as I must 
add with a sigh, of its possible vileness. 
So thick a curtain of manners is drawn over 
the features and expression of men's 
natures, that, to the ordinary observer, the 
two extremities, and the infinite field of 
varieties which lie between them, are all 

* The Bristol Mail is the best appointed in the 
kingdom, owing to tlie double advantage of an im- 
usaially good road, and of an extra sum for expenses 
subscribed by the Bristol merchants. 



an iBm\i6h ©pfum=l£ater. 71 

confounded— the vast and multitudinous 
compass of their several harmonies reduced 
to the meager outline of differences ex- 
pressed in the gamut or alphabet of ele- 
mentary sounds. The case was this : for the 
first four or five miles from London, I an- 
noyed my fellow-passenger on the roof, by 
occasionally falling against him when the 
coach gave a lurch to his side ; and, indeed, 
if the road had been less smooth and level 
than it is, I should have fallen off, from 
weakness. Of this annoyance he com- 
plained heavily, as, perhaps, in the same 
circumstances, most people would. He 
expressed his complaint, however, more 
morosely than the occasion seemed to 
warrant; and if I had parted with him at 
that moment, I should have thought of him 
(if I had considered it worth while to think 
of him at all) as a surly and almost brutal 
fellow. However, I was conscious that I 
had given him some cause for complaint, 
and, tlierefore, I apologized to him, and 
assured him I would do what I could to 
avoid falling asleep for the future, and at 
the same time, in as few words as possible, 
I explained to him that I was ill, and in a 



72 Zbc Contc6Bion6 of 

weak state from long suffering, and that 
I could not afford, at that tmie, to take an 
inside place. The man's manner changed 
upon hearing this explanation, in an instant ; 
and when I next woke for a minute, from 
the noise and lights of Hounslow (for, in 
spite of my wishes and efforts, I had fallen 
asleep again within two minutes from the 
time I had spoken to him), I found that he 
had put his arm round me to protect me 
from falling off; and for the rest of my 
journey he behaved to me with tlie gentle- 
ness of a woman, so that, at length, I almost 
lay in his arms ; and this was the more 
kind, as he could not have known that I 
was not going the whole way to Bath or 
Bristol. Unfortunately, indeed, I did go 
rather further than i intended; for so 
genial and refreshing was my sleep, that 
the next time, after leaving Hounslow, that 
1 fully awoke, was upon the sudden pulling 
up of the mail (possibly at a post-office)^ 
and, on inquiry, I found tliat we had 
reached Maidenhead, six or seven miles, I 
think, ahead of Salt Hill. Here I alighted ; 
and for the half minute that the mail 
stopped, I was entreated by my friendly 



an iBmlisb Opium==]£ater. 73 

companion (who, from the transient glimpse 
I had of him in Piccadilly, seemed to me 
to be a gentleman's butler, or person of that 
rank), to go to bed without delay. This I 
promised, though with no intention of 
doing so; and, in fact, I immediately set 
forward, or rather, backward, on foot. It 
must then have been nearly midnight; but 
so slowly did I creep along, that I heard a 
clock in a cottage strike four before I 
turned down the lane from Slough to Eton. 
The air and the sleep had both refreshed 
me ; but I was weary, nevertheless. I re. 
member a thought (obvious enough, and 
which has been prettily expressed by ^ 
Eoman poet) which gave me some conson 
lation, at that momcn\ ^:nder my poverty. 
There had been, some time before, a murdet 
committed on or near Hounslow Heath.=* 

* Two men, Holloway and Haggerty, were long 
afterward convicted, upon very questionable evi- 
dence, as the per^petrators of this murder. The main 
testimony a-ainst them was that of a Newgate 
turnkey who had imperfectly overheard a conversation 
between the two m^ i. The curren impression was 
that of ^eat dissatisfaction with the evidence , and 
-lis impression was strengthened by the pamphlet of 
an acute lawyer, exposing the unsoundness and mco- 



74 XLbc ContcsBione of 

I think I cannot be mistaken when I say 
that the name of the murdered person was 
Steele, and that he was the owner of a 
lavender plantation in that neighborhood. 
Every step of my progress was bringing 
me nearer to the heath ; and it naturally 
occurred to me that I and the accursed 
murderer, if he were that night abroad, 
might, at every instant, be unconsciously 
approaching each other through the dark- 
ness ; in which case, said I, supposing I — 
instead of being (as, indeed, I am), little 
better than an outcast. 

Lord of my learning, and no land beside — 

were, like my friend Lord , heir, by 

general repute, to £70,000 per annum, what 
a panic should I be under, at this moment, 
about my throat ! Indeed, it was not likely 

herency of the statements relied upon by the court. 
They were executed, however, in the teeth of all op- 
position. And as it happened that an enormous 
wreck of life occurred at the execution (not fewer, I 
believe, than sixty persons having been trampled 
«nder foot by the unusual pressure of some brewers* 
draymen forcing their way with linked arms to the 
space below the drop), this tragedy was regarded for 
many years by a section of the London mob as a prov- 
idential judgment upon the passive metropolis. 



3n iBnalisb Q\>iiim:^lBntzt. 75 

that Lord should ever be in my situation ; 

but nevertheless the spirit of the remark 
remains true, that vast power and posses- 
sions make a man shamefully afraid of dy- 
ing ; and I am con- 'need that many of the 
most intrepid ar ven^ irers, who, by fortu- 
nately being poor, "i"*oy the full use of their 
natural courage, would, if, at the very 
instant of going into action, news were 
brought to them th t they had unexpect- 
edly succeeded to an Cb te in England of 
^50,0( a year, feel their dislike to bullets 
considerably sharpened ^ and their efforts at 
perfect equanimity and self-possession pro- 
portionably difficult. So true it is, in the 
language of a wise man, whose own expe- 
rience had made him acquainted with both 
fortunes, that riches are better fitted, 

To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, 

Then tempt her to do aught may merit praise. 

Paradise Begained» 

* It will be objected that many men, of the highest 
rank and wealth, have, in our own day, as well as 
throughout our history, been among the foremost in 
courting danger in battle. True, but this is not the 
ease supposed. Long familiarity with power has, to 
them, deadened its effect and its attractions. 



76 Zbc Contessions of 

I dally with my subject, because, to my- 
self, the remembrance of these times is pro- 
foundly interesting. But my reader shall 
not have any further cause to complain ; 
for I now hasten to its lose. In the road 
between Slough and Eton I fell asleep ; and, 
just as the morning began to dawn, I was 
awakened by the voice of a man standing 
over me and surveying me. I know not 
what he was. He was an ill-looking fellow, 
but not, therefore, of necessity, an ill-mean- 
ing fellow; or, if he were, I suppose he 
thought that no person sleeping out-of- 
doors in winter could be worth robbing. 
In which conclusion, however, as it regarded 
myself, I beg to assure him, if he should be 
among my readers, that he Avas mistaken^ 
After a slight remark, he passed on. I was 
not sorry at his disturbance, as it enabled 
me to pass through Eton , efore people were 
generally up. The night had been heavy 
and lowering, but toward 'the morning ifc 
had changed to a slight frost, and the 
ground and the trees were now covered 
with rime. I slipped through Eton unob- 
served ; washed myself, and, as far as pos- 
sible, adjusted my dress, at a little public* 



an JBwQliBb ©plum=:6atet» 77 

house in Windsor ; and, about eight o'clock, 
went down toward Pote's. On my road I 
met some junior boys, of whom I made 
inquiries. An Etonian is always a gentle- 
man, and, in spite of my shabby habiliments, 
they answered me civilly. My friend, Lord 

, was going to the University of . 

*' Ibi omnis eflfusus labor ! " I had, how- 
ever, other friends at Eton ; but it is not to 
all who wear that name in prosperity that a 
man is willing to present himself in distress. 
On recollecting myself, however, I asked for 
the Earl of D , to whom (though my ac- 
quaintance with him was not so intimate as 
with some others) I should not have shrunk 
from presenting myself under any circum- 
stances. He was still at Eton, though, I 
believe on the wing for Cambridge. I 
called, was received kindly, and asked to 
breakfast. 

Here let me stop, for a moment, to check 
my reader from any erroneous conclusions. 
Because I have had occasion incidentally to 
speak of various patrician friends, it must 
not be supposed that I have myself any pre- 
tensions to rank or high blood. I thank 
God that I have not. I am the son of a 



78 Zbc Gonteesfons of 

plain English merchant, esteemed, during 
his life, for his great integrity, and strongly 
attached to literary pursuits (indeed, he was 
himself, anonymously, an author). If he 
had lived, it was expected that he would 
have been very rich; but, dying prema- 
turely, he left no more than about £30,000, 
among seven different claimants. My 
mother I may mention with honor, as still 
more highly gifted ; for though unpretend- 
ing to the name and honors of a literary 
woman, I shall presume to call her (what 
many literary women are not) an intellectual 
woman; and I believe that if ever her 
letters should be collected and published, 
they would be thought generally to exhibit 
as much strong and masculine sense, de- 
livered in as pure " mother English," racy and 
fresh with idiomatic graces, as any in our 
language— hardly excepting those of Lady 
M. W. Montague. These are my honors ot 
descent; I have no others; and I have 
thanked God smcerely that 1 have not, be- 
cause, in my judgment, a station which raises 
a man too eminently above the level of his 
fellow-creatures, is not the most favorable 
to moral or to mtellectual qualities. 



Tx)rd D placed bpfore me 8 mo^trDa^ 

nifioert breakfast. It was really so bntin 
my eyes it seemed trebly mag-niflcent, froa 
being the first regular meal, the first " good 
man's table," that I had sat down to for 
months. Strange to say, however, I could 
scarcely eat anything. On the day when I 
first received my ten-pound bank-note, I had 
gone to a baker's shop and bought a couple of 
rolls ; this very shop I had, two months or 
six weeks before, surveyed with an eager- 
ness of desire wiiich it was almost humiliat- 
ing to me to recollect. I remembered the 
story about Otway ; and feared that there 
might be danger in eating too rapidly. But 
I had no need for alarm ; ray appetite was 
quite sunk, and I became sick before I had 
eaten half of w^hat I had bought. This 
effect, from eating what approached to a 
meal, I continued to feel for weeks ; or, when 
I did not experience any nausea, part of 
what I eat was rejected, sometimes with 
acidity, sometiMies immediately and without 
any acidity. On the present occasion, at 

Lord D 's table, I found myself not at 

all better than usual ; and, in the midst of 
luxmrJLes, I had no appetite. I had^, how- 



80 Zbc ContcsBiorxB of 

ever, unfortunately, at all times a craving 
for wine ; I explained my situation, there- 
fore, to Lord D , and gave him a short 

account of my late sufferings, at which he 
expressed great compassion, and called for 
wine. This gave me a momentary relief 
and pleasure ; and on all occasions, when I 
had an opportunity, I never failed to drink 
wine, which I worshiped then as I have 
since worshiped opium. I am convinced, 
however, that tliis indulgence in wine con- 
tinued to strengthen my malady, for the 
tone of my stomach was apparently quite 
sunk ; but, by a better regimen, it might 
sooner, and, perhaps, effectually, have been 
revived. I hope that it was not from this 
love of wine that I lingered in the neighbor- 
hood of my Eton friends ; I persuaded my- 
self then that it was from reluctance to ask 

of Lord L) , on whom I was conscious I 

had not sufficient claims, the particular 
service in quest of which I had come to 
Eton. I was, however, unwilling to lose my 

journey, and — I asked it. Lord B , 

whose good nature was unbounded, and 
which, in regard to myself, had been 
measured rather by his compassion perhaps 



an Englteb ©plums=;ieatec» 81 

for my condition, and his knowledge of my 
intimacy with some of his relatives, than 
by an over-rigorous inquiry into the extent 
of my own direct claims, faltered, neverthe- 
less, at this request. He acknowledged that 
lie did not like to have any dealings with 
money-lenders, and feared lesfe such a trans- 
action might come to the ears of his con- 
nections. Moreover, he doubted whether 
his signature, whose expectations were so 

much more bounded than those of , 

would avail with my unchristian friends. 
However he did not wish, as it seemed, to 
mortify me by an absolute refusal ; for, 
after a little consideration, he promised, 
under certain conditions, which he pointed 

out, to give his security. Lord D was 

at this time not eighteen years of age ; but 
I have often doubted, on recollecting since, 
the good sense and prudence which on this 
occasion he mingled with so much urbanity 
of manner (an urbanity which in him wore 
the grace of youthful sincerity), whether any 
statesman — the oldest and the most accom- 
plished in diplomacy — could have acquitted 
himself better under the same circum- 
stances. Most people, indeed, cannot be 
6 



82 Cbe Gonte65ion0 ot 

addressed on such business, without survey- 
ing you with looks as austere and unpropU 
tious as those of a Saracen's head. 

Recomforted by this promise, which was 
not quite equal to the best, but far above 
the worst, that I had pictured to myself as 
possible, I returned in a Windsor coach to 
London three days after I had quitted it 
And now I come to the end of my story. 

The Jews did not approve of Lord D 's 

terms ; whether they would in the end have 
acceded to them, and were only seeking time 
for making due inquiries, I know not; but 
many delays were made — time passed on — 
the small fragment of my bank-note had 
just melted away, and before any conclusion 
could have been put to the business, I must 
have relapsed into my former state of 
wretchedness. Suddenly, however, at this 
crisis, an opening was made, almost by ac- 
cident, for reconciliation with my friends. I 
quitted London in haste for a remote part 
of England; after some time, I proceeded 
to the university ; and it was not until many 
months had passed away, that I had it in 
my power again to revisit the ground which 
had become so interesting to me, and to this 



an Englieb ©pium^JEater* 83 

day remains so, as the chief scene of my 
youthful sufferings. 

Meantime, what had become of poor Ann ? 
For her I have reserved my concluding 
words; according to our agreement, I 
sought her daily, and waited for her every 
night, so long as stayed in London, at the 
corner of Titchfield Street. I inquired for 
her of every one who was likely to know 
her ; and during the last hours of my stay 
in London, I put into activity every means 
of tracing her that my knowledge of Lon- 
don suggested, and the limited extent of my 
power made possible. The street where she 
had lodged I knew, but not the house ; and 
1 remembered, at last, some account which 
she had given of ill-treatment from her 
landlord, which made it probable that she 
had quitted those lodgings before we parted. 
She had few acquaintances ; most people, 
besides, thought that the earnestness of my 
inquiries arose from motives which moved 
th^ir laughter or their slight regard ; and 
others, thinking that I was in chase of a 
girl who had robbed me of some trifles, were 
naturally and excusably indisposed to give 
me any clew to her, if, indeed, they had any 



84 ttbe Confessions of 

to give. Finally, as my despairing resource, 
on the day I left London, I put into the 
hands of the only person who (I am sure) 
must know Ann by sight, from having beea 
in company with us once or twice, an ad- 
dress to in shire, at that time the 

residence of my family. But, to this hour^ 
I have never heard a syllable about her^ 
This, among such troubles as most m^n 
meet with in this life, has been my heaviest 
affliction. If she lived, doubtless we must 
have been sometimes in search of each other, 
at the very same moment, through the 
mighty labyrinth of London ; perhaps even 
within a few feet of each other — a barrier 
no wider, in a London street, often amount- 
ing in the end to a separation for eternity! 
During some years, I hoped that she did 
live ; and I supposed that, in the literal and 
unrhetorical use of the word myriad^ I may 
say, that on my different visits to London, I 
have looked into many, many myriads ^^of 
female faces, in the hope of meeting her. I 
should know her again among a thousand, 
if I saw her for a moment ; for, though not 
handsome, she had a sweet expression of 
countenance, and a peculiar and graceful 



an jSnglieb ©pium=jSater. 85 

carriage of the head. I sought her, I have 
said, ill hope. So it was for years; but 
now I should fear to see her; and her 
cough, which grieved me when I parted 
with her, is now my consolation. I now 
wish to see her no longer, but think of her, 
more gladly, as one long since laid in the 
grave — in the grave, I would hope, of a 
Magdalen — taken away, before injuries and 
cruelty had blotted out and transfigured 
her ingenuous nature, or the brutalities of 
ruffians had completed the ruin they had 
begun. 

So then, Oxford Street, stony-hearted 
step-mother, thou that listenest to the sighs 
of orphans, and drinkest the tears of chil- 
dren, at length I was dismissed from thee! — 
the time was come, at last, that I no more 
should pace in anguish thy never-ending ter- 
races; no more should dream, and wake iu 
captivity to the pan gs of hunger. Successors 
too many, to myself and Ann have, doubt- 
less, since then trodden in our footsteps, in- 
heritors of our calamities ; other orphans 
than Ann have sighed, tears have been shed 
by other children ; and thou, Oxford Street, 
hast since echoed to the groans of innumer- 



86 Zbc ContcBSions af 

able hearts. For myself, however, the 
storm which I had outlived seemed to have 
been the pledge of a long fair weather ; the 
premature sufferings which I had paid 
down, to have been accepted as a ransom 
for many years to come, as a price of long 
immunity from sorrow ; and if again I 
walked in London, a solitary and contem- 
plative man (as oftentimes I did), I walked 
for the most part in serenity and peace of 
mind. And, although it is true that the 
calamities of my novitiate in London had 
struck root so deeply in my bodily constitu- 
tion that afterward they shot up and flour- 
ished afresh, and grew into a noxious um- 
brage that has overshadowed and darkened 
my latter, years, yet these second assaults 
of suffering were met with a fortitude more 
confirmed, with the resources of a maturer 
intellect, and with alleviations from sym- 
pathizing affection, how deep and tender ! 

Thus, however, with whatsoever allevia- 
tions, years that were far asunder were bound 
together by subtile links of suffering derived 
from a common root. And herein I notice 
an instance of the short-sightedness of hu- 
man desires — that oftentimes, on moonlight 



an iBmlisb ©pium^Eatc* 87 

nights, during my first mournful abode in 
London, my consolation was (if such it could 
be thought) to gaze from Oxford Street up 
every avenue in succession which pierces 
through the heart of Marylebone to the fields 
and the woods; for t/iat^ said I, traveling with 
my eyes up the long vistas which lay part in 
light and part in shade, " that is the road to 

the north, and, therefore, to , and if I 

had the wings of a dove, that way I would 
fly for comfort." Thus I said, and thus I 
wished in my blindness ; yet, even in that 
very northern region it was, in that very 
valley, nay, in that very house to which my 
erroneous wishes pointed, that this second 
birth of my sufferings began, and that they 
again threatened to besiege the citadel of 
life and hope. There it was that for years 
I was persecuted by visions as ugly, and as 
ghastly phantoms, as ever haunted the couch 
of an Orestes ; and in this unhappier than, 
he — that sleep, which comes to all as a res- 
pite and a restoration, and to him especially 
as a blessed balm for his wounded heart and 
his haunted brain, visited me as my bitter- 
est scourge. Thus blind was I in my desires ; 
yet, if a veil interposes between the dim- 



88 ^be Contc56\om of 

sightedness of man and his future calami- 
ties, the same vale hides from him their 
alleviations ; and a grief which had not been 
feared is met by consolations which had nofc 
been hoped. I, therefore, who participated, 
as it were, in the troubles of Orestes (except- 
ing only in his agitated conscience), partici- 
pated no less in all his supports ; my Eu- 
menides, like his, were at my bed-feet, and 
stared in upon me through the curtains; 
but, watching by my pillow, or defrauding- 
herself of sleep to bear me company through 
the heavy watches of the night, sat my 
Electra ; for thou, beloved M , dear com- 
panion of my later years, thou wast my 
Electra ! and neither in nobility of mind 
nor in long-suffering affection wouldst per- 
mit that a Grecian sister should excel aa 
English wife. For thou thoughtest not 
much to stoop to humble officp'^ of kindness, 
and to servile ministrations of tenderesfc 
affection ; to wipe away for years the un- 
wholesome dews upon the forehead, or to re- 
fresh the lips when parched and baked with 
fever ; nor even when thy own peaceful 
slumbers had by long sympathy become 
infected with the spectacle of my dread 



an Bngllsb ®i>ium=JEat. 89 

contest with phantoms and shadowy ene- 
mies, that often timesbade me " sleep no 
more ! " — not even then didst thou utter a 
complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw 
thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy 
service of love, mere than Electra did of old. 
For she, too, though she was a Grecian 
woman, and the daughter of the king ^ of 
men, yet w^ept sometimes, and hid her face t 
in her robe. 

But these troubles are past, and thou wilt 
read these records of a period so dolorous 
to us both as the legend of some hideous 
dream that can return no more. Meantime 
I am again in London ; and again I pace 

* Agamemnon. 

t Oniia ^ecg etg ireTrTiov, The scholar will know that 
throughout this passage I refer to the early scenes of 
the Orestes — one of the most beautiful exhibitions of 
the domestic affections which even the dramas of 
Euripides can furnish. To the English reader, it may- 
be necessary to say, that this situation at the open- 
ing of the drama is that of a brother attended only 
by his sister during the demoniacal possession of a 
suffering conscience (or, in the mythology of the play, 
haunted by the furies), and in circumstances of im- 
mediate danger from enemies, and of desertion or 
cold regard from nominal friends. 



'90 tlbe QontcBsions ct 

the terraces of Oxford Street by night; 
and oftentimes— when I am oppressed by 
anxieties that demand all my philosophy 
and the comfort of thy presence to support, 
and yet remember that I am separated from 
thee by three hundred miles, and the length 
of three dreary months— I look up the 
streets that run northward from Oxford 
Street, upon moonlight nights, and recollect 
my youthful ejaculation of anguish; and 
remembering that thou art sitting alone in 
that same valley, and mistress of that very 
house to which my heart turned in its blind- 
ness nineteen years ago, I think that, though 
blind indeed, and scattered to the winds of 
late, the promptings of my heart may yet 
have had reference to a remoter time, and 
may be justified if read in another mean- 
ing; and if I could allow myself to descend 
again to the impotent wishes of childhood, 
I should again say to myself, as I look to 
the north, " Oh, that I had the wings of a 
dove ! " and with how just a confidence in 
thy good and gracious nature might I add 
the other half of my early ejaculation—" and 
that way I would fly for comfort ! " 



Qii JBnglfeb ©pium^Eatei:* 91 



The Pleasures of Opium. 

It is so long since I first took opium, that 
if it had been a trifling incident of my life, 
I might have forgotten its date ; but car- 
dinal events are not to be forgotten ; and 
from circumstances connected with it, I 
remember that it must be referred to the 
antumn of 1804, During that season I was 
in London, having come thither for the first 
time since my entrance at college. And my 
introduction to opium arose in the follow- 
ing way : From an early age I had been 
accustomed to wash my head in cold water 
at least once a day ; being suddenly seized 
with toothache, I attributed it to some re- 
laxation caused by an accidental intermis- 
sion of that practice; jumped out of bed, 
plunged my head into a basin of cold water, 
and, with hair thus wetted, went to sleep. 
The next morning, as I need hardly say, I 
awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of 
the head and face, from which I had hardly 



92 XLbc Confessions of 

any respite for about twenty days. On the 
twenty-first day I think it was, and on a 
Sunday, that I went out into the streets; 
ratlier to run away, if possible, from my 
torments, than with any distinct purpose. 
By accident, I met a college acquaintance, 
who recommended opium. Opium ! dread 
agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain! 
I had heard of it as I had heard of manna 
or of ambrosia, but no further; how un- 
meaning a sound was it at that time ! what 
solemn chords does it now strike upon my 
heart ! what heart-quaking vibrations of sad 
and happy remembrances ! Reverting for 
a moment to these, I feel a mystic importance 
attached to the minutest circumstances con- 
nected with the place, and the time, and the 
man (if man he was), that first laid open to 
me the paradise of opium-eaters. It was a 
Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless ; and a 
duller spectacle this earth of ours has not 
to show than a rainy Sunday in London* 
My road liomeward lay through Oxford 
Street; and near "the stately Pantheon'* 
(as Mr. Wordsworth has obligingly called 
it) I saw a druggist's shop. The druggist 
(unconscious minister of celestial pleasures !) 



an iBnQlieb ©ptum^jEater. 93 

as if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, 
looked dull and stupid, just as any mortal 
druggist might be expected to look on a 
Sunday ; and when I asked for the tinct- 
ure of opium, he gave it to me as any 
any other man might do ; and, furthermore, 
out of my shilling returned to me what 
seemed to be a real copper half-penny, taken 
out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless^ 
in spite of such indications of humanity, he 
has ever since existed in my mind as a 
beatific vision of an immortal druggist, sent 
down to earth on a special mission to my- 
self. And it confirms me in this way of 
considering him, that when I next came up 
to London, I sought him near the stately 
Pantheon, and found him not, and thus to 
me, who knew not his name (if, indeed, he 
had one), he seemed rather to have vanished 
from Oxford Street than to have removed 
in any bodily fashion. The reader may 
choose to think of him as possibly no more 
than a sublunary druggist : it may be so, 
but my faith is better : I believe him to 
have evanesced,^ or evaporated. So un- 

* Evanesced : — This way of going off from the 
stage of life appears to have been well known in the 



94 XTbe Conte96ion6 of 

willingly would I connect any mortal re- 
membrances with that hour, and place, and 
creature, that first brought me acquainted 
with the celestial drug. 

Arrived at my lodgings, it may be sup- 
posed that I lost not a moment in taking 
the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily 
ignorant of the whole art and mystery of 
opium-taking ; and what I took, I took 
under every disadvantage. But I took it ; 
and in an hour — oh heavens ! what a revul- 
sion ! what an upheaving, from its lowest 
depths, of the inner spirit ! what an apoca- 
lypse of the world within me ! That my 
pains had vanished was now a trifle in my 
eyes ; this negative effect was swallowed up 
in the immensity of those positive effects 
which had opened before me, in the abyss of 

seventeenth century, but at that time to have been 
considered a peculiar privilege of blood royal, and by- 
no means to be allowed to druggists. For, about the 
year 1686, a poet of rather ominous name and who, 
by the by, did ample justice to his name), namely, 
Mk. Flat-man, in speaking of the death of Charles 
II., expresses his surprise that any prince should 
commit so absurd an act as dying ; because, says he. 

Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear 
They should abscond^ that is, into the other world. 



an JBml\6b Ovinm^lBatcv. 95 

divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. 
Here was a panacea, a d'apriayjr^ \>£7Teu0e^^ for 
all human woes ; here was the secret of 
happiness, about which philosophers had 
disputed for so many ages, at once dis- 
covered ; happiness might now be bought 
for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat- 
pocket ; portable ecstasies might be had 
corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of 
mind could be sent down in gallons by the 
mail-coach. But, if I talk in this way, the 
reader will think I am laughing ; and I can- 
assure him that nobody will laugh long who 
deals much with opium : its pleasures even 
are of a grave and solemn complexion ; and, 
in his happiest state, the opium-eater can 
not present himself in the character of 
X"^ Allegro ; even then, he speaks and thinks 
as becomes 11 Penseroso. Nevertheless, I 
have a very reprehensible way of jesting, 
at times, in the midst of my own misery ; 
and, unless when I am checked by some 
more powerful feelings, I am afraid I shall 
be guilty of this indecent practice even in 
these annals of suffering or enjoyment. 
The reader must allow a Uttle to my infirm 
nature in this respect ; and, with a few 



96 XLbc Conte60l(jn6 ot 

indulgences of that sort, I shall endeavor 
to be as grave, if not drowsy, as fits a theme 
like opium, so anti-mercurial as it really is, 
and so drowsy as it is falsely reputed. 

And, first, one word with respect to its 
bodily effects ; for upon all that has been 
hitherto written on the subject of opium, 
whether by travelers in Turkey (who may 
plead their privilege of lying as an old im- 
memorial right) or by professors of medicine, 
writing ex cathedra^ I have but one em- 
phatic criticism to pronounce : Lies ! lies ! 
lies ! I remember once, in passing a book- 
stall, to have caught these words from a 
page of some satiric author : " By this time 
I became convinced that the London news- 
papers spoke truth at least twice a week, 
namely, on Tuesday and Saturday, and 
might safely be depended upon for — the list 
of bankrupts." In like manner, I do by no 
means deny that some truths have been 
delivered to the world in regard to opium ; 
thus, it has been repeatedly affirmed, by the 
learned, that opium is a dusky brown in 
color — and this, take notice, I grant; 
secondly, that it is rather dear, which also I 
grant — for, in my time, East India opium 



an iBmUsb ®ptum==Bater^ 97 

has been three guineas a pound, and Turkey, 
eight ; and, thh'dly, that if you eat a good 
deal of it, most probably you must do what 
is particularly disagreeable to any man of reg- 
ular habits, namely — die.^ These weighty 
propositions are, all and singular, true; I can- 
not gainsay them ; and truth ever was, and 
will be, commendable. But in these three 
theorems I believe we have exhausted the 
stock of knowledge as yet accumulated by 
man on the subject of opium. And, there- 
fore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be 
room for further discoveries, stand aside, 
and allow me to come forward and lecture 
on this matter. 

First, then, it is not so much affirmed as 
taken for granted, by all who ever mention 
opium, formally or incidentally, that it does 

*0f this, however, the learned appear latterly 
to have doubted ; for, in a pirated edition of Bu- 
chanan's Domestic Medicine, which I once saw in 
the hands of a farmer's wife, who was studying it for 
the benefit of her health, the doctor was made to say : 
*' Be particularly careful never to take above five-and- 
twenty ounces of laudanum at once." The true 
reading being probably five-and-twent7 drops, which 
are held to be equal to about one grain of crude 

opium. 
7 



98 ^be Contc65ione c: 

or can produce intoxication. Xow, reader, 
assure yourself, meo periculo, that no 
quantity of opium ever did, or could, intoxi- 
cate. As to the tincture of opium (com- 
monly called laudanum), that might cer^ 
tainly intoxicate, if a man could bear to take 
enough of it ; but why ? because it contains 
so much proof spirit, and not because it 
contains so much opium. But crude opium, 
I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of produc- 
ing any state of body at all resembling that 
which is produced by alcohol ; and not in 
degree only incapable, but even in hind ; it 
is not in the quantity of its effects merely, 
but in the quality, that it differs altogether. 
The pleasure given by wine is always 
mounting, and tending to a crisis, after 
which it declines ; that from opium, when 
once generated, is stationary for eight or 
ten hours : the first, to borrow a technical 
distinction from medicine, is a case of acute, 
the second of chronic, pleasure ; the one is a 
flame, the other a steady and equable glow. 
But the main distinction lies in this, that 
whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, 
opium, on the contrary (if taken in a pn^per 
manner), introduces among^ them the n:iost 



an jBnglisb ©ptum^sBater^ 99 

exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. 
Wine robs a man of his self-possession; 
opium greatly invigorates it. Wine un- 
settles and clouds the judgment, and gives 
a preternatural brightness, and a vivid ex- 
altation, to the contempts and the admira- 
tions, to the loves and the hatreds, of the 
drinker; opium, on the contrary, communi- 
cates serenity and equipoise to all the facul- 
ties, active or passive ; and, with respect to the 
temper and moral feelings in general, it gives 
simply that sort of vital warmth which is 
approved by the judgment, and which would 
probably always accompany a bodily con- 
stitution of primeval or antediluvian health. 
Thus, for instance, opium, like wine, gives 
an expansion to the heart and the benevolent 
affections ; but, then, with this remarkable 
difference, that in the sudden development 
of kind-heartedness which accompanies 
inebriation, there is always more or less of a 
maudlin character, which exposes it to the 
contempt of the by-stander. Men shake 
hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed 
tears — no mortal knows why ; and the sen- 
sual creature is clearly uppermost. But 
the expansion of the benigner feelings, in- 



100 TLbc dontcssions of 

cident to opium, is no febrile access, but a 
healthy restoration to that state which the 
mind would naturally recover upon the re- 
moval of any deep-seated irritation of pain 
that had disturbed and quarreled with the 
impulses of a heart originally just and good. 
True it is, that even wine, ux3 to a certain 
point, and with certain men, rather tends to 
exalt and to steady the intellect ; I myself, 
who had never been a great wine-drinker, 
used to find that half a dozen glasses of 
wme advantageously affected the faculties, 
brightened and intensified the conscious- 
ness, and gave to the mind a feeling of being 
** ponderibus librata suis ; " and certainly it 
is most absurdly said, in popular language, 
of any man, that he is disguised in liquor ; 
for, on the contrary, most men are disguised 
by sobriety ; and it is when they are drink- 
ing (as some old gentleman says in 
Athenseus) that men display themselves in 
their true complexion of character ; which 
surely is not disguising themselves. But 
still, wine constantly leads a man to the 
brink of absurdity and extravagance ; and, 
beyond a certain point, it is sure to vol- 
atilize and to disperse the intellectual en- 



an En^lfab ®pfum=Eaten 101 

ergies; whereas opium always seems to 
compose what had been agitated, and to 
concentrate what had been distracted. In 
short, to sum up all in one word, a man who 
is inebriated, or tending to inebriation, is, 
and feels that he is, in a condition which 
calls up into supremacy the merely human, 
too often brutal, part of his nature ; but the 
opium-eater (I speak of him who is not 
suffering from any disease, or other remote 
effects of opium) feels that the diviner part 
of his nature is paramount; that is, the 
moral affections are in a state of cloudless 
serenity ; and over all is the great light of 
the majestic intellect. 

This is the doctrine of the true church on 
the subject of opium: of which church I 
acknowledge myself to be the only member 
— the alpha and omega ; but then it is to be 
recollected that I speak from the ground of 
a large and profound personal experience, 
whereas most of the unscientific ^ authors 

* Among the great herd of travelers, etc. , who show 
sufficiently by their stupidity that they never held 
any intercourse with opium, I must caution my 
readers specially against the brilliant author of An- 
astasms. This gentleman, whose wit would lead one 



102 XTbe Conte66fon0 of 

who have at all treated of opium, and even 
of those who have written expressly on the 
materia mecUca^ make it evident, from the 
horror they express of it, that their experi- 
mental knowledge of its action is none at 

to presume him an opium-eater, has made it impossi- 
ble to consider him in that character, from the grievous 
misrepresentation which he has given of its effects, 
at pages 215-217, of Yol. I. Upon consideration, it 
must appear such to the author himself ; for, waiving 
the errors I have insisted on in the text, which (and 
others) are adopted in the fullest manner, he will 
himself admit that an old gentleman, " with a snow- 
white beard," who eats ''ample doses of opium," and 
is yet able to deliver what is meant and received as 
very weighty counsel on the bad effects of that prac- 
tice, is but an indifferent evidence that opium either 
kills people prematurely or sends them into a mad- 
house. But, for my part, I see into this old gentle- 
man and his motives, the fact is, he was enamored 
of "the little golden receptacle of the pernicious 
drug," which Anastasius carried about him ; and no 
way of obtaining it so safe and so feasible occurred as 
that of frightening its owner out of his wits (which, 
by the bye, are none of the strongest). This com- 
mentary throws a new light upon the case, and greatly 
improves it as a story ; for the old gentleman's speech, 
considered as a lecture on pharmacy, is highly ab- 
surd; but, considered as a hoax on Anastasius, it 
reads excellently. 



an )£nGlt6b ©plum^^lEater. 103 

all. I will, however, candidly acknowledge 
thai I have met with one person who bore 
evidence to its intoxicating power, such as 
staggered my own incredulity ; for he was 
a surgeon, and had himself taken opium 
largely.^ I happened to say to him, that 

*Tliis surgeon it was who first made me aware of 
the dangerous yariability in opium as to strength 
under the shifting proportions of its combination 
with alien impurities. Naturally, as a man profes- 
sionally alive to the danger of creating any artificial 
need of opium beyond what the anguish of his mal- 
ady at any rate demanded, trembling every hour on 
behalf of his poor children, lest, by any indiscretion 
of his own, he should precipitate the crisis of his dis- 
order, he saw the necessity of reducing the daily doses 
to^minimum. But to do this he must first obtain the 
means of measuring the quantities of opium; not the 
apparent quantities as determined by weighing, but 
the virtual quantities after allowing for the alloy or 
varying amounts of impurity. This, however, was a 
visionary problem. To allow for it was simply im- 
possible. The problem, therefore, changed its char- 
acter. Xot to measure the impurities was the object ; 
for, while entangled with the operative and effi- 
cient parts of the opium, they could not be measured. 
To separate and eliminate the impure (or inert) 
parts, this was not the object. And this was efi^ected 
finally by a particular mode of boiling the opium. 
That done, the residuum became equable in strength; 



104 Zbc ContC65ion6 of 

his enemies (as I had heard) charged him 
with talking nonsense on politics, and that 
his friends apologized for him by suggesting 
that he was constantly in a state of intox- 
ication from opium. Now, the accusation, 
said I, is not prima facie, and, of necessity, 
an absurd one ; but the defense is. To my 
surprise, however, he insisted that both his 
enemies and his friends were in the right. 
"I will maintain," said he, " that I do talk 
nonsense and secondly, I will maintain 
that I do not talk nonsense upon principle, 
or with any view to profit, but solely and 
simply," said he, " solely and simply— solely 

and the daily doses could be nicely adjusted. About 
18 grains formed his daily ration for many years. 
This, upon the common hospital equation, expresses 
18 times 25 drops of laudanum. But since 25 is =* 
^J^, therefore 18 times one quarter of a hundred is 
= one quarter of 1800, and that, I suppose, is 450. 
So much this surgeon averaged upon each day for 
about twenty years. Then suddenly began a fiercer 
stage of anguish from his disease. But then, also, 
the fight was finished, and the victor}^ was won. 
All duties were fulfilled; his children prosperously 
launched in Ufe, and death, which to himself was 
becoming daily more necessary as a relief from tor- 
ment, now fell injuriously upon nobody. 




" When I lay awake in bed, vast processions 
passed along in sorrowful pomp." 



an En^lisb ©pium^Eater* 105 

and simply (repeating it three times over) 
because I am drunk with opium, and that 
daily." I replied, that as to the allegation of 
his enemies, as it seemed to be established 
upon such respectable testimony, seeing that 
the three parties concerned all agreed in it, 
it did not become me to question it ; but the 
defense set up I must demur to. He pro- 
ceeded to discuss the matter, and to lay 
down his reasons ; but it seemed to me so im- 
polite to pursue an argument which must 
have presumed a man mistaken on a point 
belonging to his own profession, that I did 
not press him even when his course of argu- 
ment seemed open to objection ; not to men- 
tion that a man who talks nonsense, even 
though " with no view to profit," is not al- 
together the most agreeable partner in a dis- 
pute, w^hether as opponent or respondent. 
I confess, however, that the authority of a 
surgeon, and one who was reputed a good 
one, may seem a weighty one to my prej- 
udice; but still I must plead my experi- 
ence, which was greater than his greatest by 
seven thousand drops a day ; and though it 
was not possible to suppose a medical man 
unacquainted with the characteristic symp- 



106 ^be Contc66lon6 of 

toms of vinous intoxication, yet it struck me 
that he might proceed on a logical error of 
using the word intoxication with too great 
latitude, and extending it generically to all 
modes of nervous excitement, instead of re- 
stricting it as the expression of a specific 
sort of excitement, connected with certain 
diagnostics. Some people have maintained, 
in my hearhig, that they had been drunk 
upon green tea ; and a medical student in 
London, for whose knowledge in his pro- 
fession I have reason to feel great respect, 
assured me, the other day, that a patient, in 
recovering from an illness, had got drunk 
on a beefsteak. 

Having dwelt so much on this first and 
leading error in respect to opium, I shall 
notice very briefly a second and a third; 
which are, that the elevation of spirits pro- 
duced by opium is necessarily followed by 
a proportionate depression, and that the 
natural and even immediate consequence of 
opium is torpor and stagnation, animal and 
mental. The first of these errors I shall con- 
tent myself with simply denying ; assuring 
my reader, that for ten years, during which 
I took opium at intervals, the day succeed- 



an Englisfj ©p{um=]Eatet. 107 

ing to that on which I allowed myself this 
luxury was always vi day of unusually good 

spirits. 

With respect to the torpor supposed to 
follow, or rather (if we were to credit the 
numerous pictures of Turkish opium-eaters) 
to accompany, the practice of opium-eating, 
I deny that also. Certainly, opium is classed 
under the head of narcotics, and some such 
effect it may produce in the end ; but the 
primary effects of opium are always, and in 
the highest degree, to excite and stimulate 
the system : this first stage of its action 
always lasted with me, during my novitiate, 
for upward of eight hours ; so that it must be 
the fault of the opium-eater himself if 
he does not so time his exhibition of 
the dose (to speak medically) as that 
the whole weight of its narcotic influence 
may descend upon his sleep. Turkish 
opium-eaters, it seems, are absurd enough to 
sit, like so many equestrian statues, on logs 
of wood as stupid as themselves. But, 
that the reader may judge of the degree in 
which opium is likely to stupefy the fac- 
ulties of an Englishman, I shall (by way of 
treating the question illustratively rather 



108 Zbc Contcssions ot 

than argumentatively) describe the way in 
which I myself often passed an opium 
evening in London, during the period be- 
tween 1804 and 1812. It will be seen that 
at least opium did not move me to seek 
solitude, and much less to seek inactivity, or 
the torpid state of self-involution ascribed 
to the Turks. I give this account at the risk 
of being pronounced a crazy enthusiast or 
visionary ; but I regard that little. I must 
desire my reader to bear in mind that I was 
a hard student, and at severe studies for all 
the rest of my time; and certainly I had a 
right ocasionally to relaxations as well as 
other people : these, however, I allowed my- 
self but seldom. 

The late Duke of ^ used to say, ''Is^ext 

*The late Duke of Xorfolk. My authority was 
the late Sir George Beaumont, an old familiar ac- 
quaintance of the duke's. But such expressions are 
always liable to grievous misapplication. By '' the 
late "duke, Sir George meant that duke once so well 
known to the nation as the partisan friend of Fox, 
Burke, Sheridan, etc., at the era of the great French 
Revolution, in 1789-93. Since his time, I believe 
there have been three generations of ducal Howards 
—who are always interesting to the English 
nation, first, from the bloody historic traditions sui> 



an En^lieb ®plum^:i£ater» 109 

Friday, by the blessing of Heaven, I purpose 
to be drunk ; " and in like manner I used to 
fix beforehand how often, within a given 
time, and when, I would commit a debauch of 
opium. This was seldom more than once in 
three weeks ; for at that time I could not 
have ventured to call every day (as I did 
afterward) for " a glass of laudanum negus, 
warm and ttnthout sugar.'' No ; as I have said, 
I seldom drank laudanum, at that time, more 
than once in three weeks : this was usually 
on a Tuesday or a Saturday night; my 
reason for which was this. In those days 
Grassini^ sung at the opera, and her voice 

rounding their great house ; secondly, from the 
fact of their being at the head of the British 
Peerage. 

* Thrilling was the pleasure with which almost 
always 1 heard this angelic Grassini. Shivering with 
expectation 1 sat, when the time drew near for her 
golden epiphany ; shivering I rose from my seat, in- 
capable of rest, when that heavenly and harp-like 
voice sung its own victorious welcome in its prelusive 
threttdnelo—tlirettdnelo. This is the beautiful rep- 
resentative echo by which Aristophanes expresses the 
sound of the Grecian phorminx, or of some other 
instrument, which conjecturally has been shown most 
to resemble our modern European harp. In the ease 



110 ^bc Contcseiono ct 

was delightful to me beyond all that I had 
ever heard. I know not what may be the 
state of the opera-house now, having never 
been within its walls for seven or eii^ht 
years ; but at that time it was by much the 
most pleasant place of resort in London for 
passing an evening. Five shillings admitted 
one to the gallery, which was subject to far 
less annoyance than the pit of the theatres ; 
the orchestra was distinguished, by its sweet 
and melodious grandeur, from all Eng- 

of ancient Hebrew instruments used in the temple 
service, random and idle must be all the guesses 
through the Greek Stepuagint or the Latin Yulgate 
to identify any one of them. But as to Grecian in- 
struments, the case is different ; always there is a 
remote chance of digging up some marble sculpture 
of orchestral appurtenances and properties. Tet all 
things change ; this same Grassini, whom once I 
adored, after^^ard, when gorged with English gold, 
went off to Paris ; and when I heard on what terms 
she lived with a man so unmagnanimous as Napoleon, 
I came to hate her. Did I complain of any man's 
hating England or teaching a woman to hate her 
benefactress ? Not at all ; but simply of his adopting 
at second-hand the malice of a jealous nation, with 
which originally he could have had no sincere 
sjrmpathy. Hate us, if you please, but not syco- 
phantishly by way of paying court to others. 



an iBrxQlisb ©pium^^JEater* 11! 

lish orchestras, the composition of which, 
I confess. Is not acceptable to my ear, 
from the predominance of the clangor- 
ous instruments, and the almost absolute 
tyranny of the violin. The choruses were 
divine to hear ; and when Grassini appeared 
in some interlude, as she often did, and 
poured forth her passionate soul as An- 
dromache, at the tomb of Hector, etc., I 
question whether any Turk, of all that ever 
entered the paradise of opium-eaters, can 
have had half the pleasure I had. But, indeed, 
I honor the barbarians too much by supposing 
them capable of any pleasures approaching 
to the intellectual ones of an Englishman. 
For music is an intellectual or a sensual pleas- 
ure, according to the temperament of him 
who hears it. And, by the bye, with the ex- 
ception of the fine extravaganza on that 
subject in ^' Twelfth Night," I do not recol- 
lect more than one thing said adequately on 
the subject of music in all literature ; it is a 
passage in the "• Religio Medici " ^ of Sir T. 

* I liaTe not the book at this moment to consult ; 
but I think the passage begins, "And even that 
tavern music, which makes one man merry, another 
mad, in. me strikes a deep fie of devotion,'* etc. 



112 XTbe Gonteeelone of 

Brown, and, though chiefly remarkable for 
its subhmity, has also a philosophic value, 
inasmuch as it points to the true theory of 
musical effect. The mistake of most people 
is, to suppose that it is by the ear they com- 
municate with music, and therefore that 
they are purely passive to its effects. But 
this is not so ; it is by the reaction of the mind 
upon the notices of the ear (the matter com- 
ing by the senses, the form from the mind) 
that the pleasure is constructed ; and there- 
fore it is that people of equally good ear 
differ so much in this point from one another. 
Now, opium, by greatly increasing the ac- 
tivity of the mind, generally increases, of 
necessity, that particular mode of its activity 
by which we are able to construct out of the 
raw material of organic sound an elaborate 
intellectual pleasure. But, says a friend, a 
succession of musical sounds is to me like a 
collection of Arabic characters : I can attach 
no ideas to them. Ideas! my good sir? 
there is no occasion for them ; all that class 
of ideas which can be available in such a case 
has a language of representative feelings. 
But this is a subject foreign to my present 
purposes ; it is sufficient to say that a chorus, 



an ^En^lisb Gpium=j£ater^ 113 

etc., of elaborate harmony, displayed before 
n^.e, as in a piece of arras-work, the whole of 
my past life — not as if recalled by an act of 
memory, but as if present and incarnated 
in the music ; no longer painful to dwell 
upon, but the detail of its incidents removed, 
or blended in some hazy abstraction, and its 
passions exalted, spiritualized, and sublimed. 
All this was to be had for five shillings. 
And over and above the music of the stage 
and the orchestra, I had all around me, in 
the intervals of the performance, the music 
of the Italian language talked by Italian 
women — for the gallery w^as usually crowded 
with Italians — and I listened with a pleasure 
such as that with which Weld, the traveler, 
lay and listened, in Canada, to the sweet 
laughter of Indian women ; for the less you 
understand of a language, the more sensible 
you are to the melody or harshness of its 
sounds. For such a purpose, therefore, it was 
an advantage to me that I was a poor Italian 
scholar, reading it but little, and not speak« 
ing it at all, nor understanding a tenth part 
of what I heard spoken. 

These were my opera pleasures ; but an- 
other pleasure I had, w^hich, as it could be 
8 



114 Cbe Confe66ion0 of 

had only on a Saturday night, occasionally 
struggled with my love of the opera; for, 
at that time, Tuesday and Saturday were the 
regular opera nights. On this subject I am 
afraid I shall be rather obscure, but, I can 
assure the reader, not all more so than 
Marinus in his life of Proclus, or many 
other biographers and auto-biographers of 
fair reputation. This pleasure, I have said, 
was to be had only on a Saturday night* 
What, then, was Saturday night to me more 
than any other night? I had no labors 
that I rested from; no wages to receive; 
what needed I to care for Saturday night, 
more than as it was a summons to hear 
Grassini ? True, most logical reader ; what 
you say is unanswerable. And yet so it 
was and is, that whereas different men 
throw their feelings into different channels, 
and most are apt to show their interest in 
the concerns of the poor chiefly by sym- 
pathy, expressed in some shape or other, with 
their distresses and sorrows, I, at that time, 
was disposed to express my interest by 
sympathizing with their pleasures. The 
pains of poverty I had lately seen too much 
of — more than I wished to remember ; but 



an }£n0li6b ©pium=]£ater» nc 

the pleasures of the poor, their consolations 
of spirit, and their reposes from bodily toil,, 
can never become oppressive to contem- 
plate. 

Now, Saturday night is the season for 
the chief regular and periodic return of 
rest to the poor, in this point the most 
hostile sects unite, and acknowledge a com- 
mon link of brot-6'^rhood ; almost all Chris- 
tendom rests hvm its labors. It is a rest 
introductory io 'mother rest ; and divided by 
a whole day po'ii two nights from the renewal 
of toil. On this account I feel always, on 
a Saturday night, as though I also were 
released fzcin some yoke of labor, had some 
wages to receive, and some luxury of repose 
to enjoy. For the sake, therefore, of wit- 
nessing, upon as large a scale as possible, 
a spectacle with which my sympathy was 
so entire, I used often, on Saturday nights, 
after I had taken opium, to wander forth, 
without much regarding the direction or the 
distance, to all the markets, and other parts of 
London, to which the poor resort on a Satur- 
day night for laying out their wages. Many 
a family party, consisting of a man, his wife^ 
and sometimes one or two of his children^ 



116 G:be Confessions of 

have I listened to, as they stood consulting 
on their ways and means, or the strength 
of their exchequer, or the price of house- 
hold articles. Gradually I became familiar 
with their wishes, their difficulties, and 
their opinions. Sometimes there might be 
heard murmurs of discontent ; but far 
oftener expressions on the countenance, or 
uttered in words of patience, hope, and tran- 
quillity. And, taken generally, I must say, 
that, in this point, at least, the poor are far 
more philosophic than the rich ; that they 
show a more ready and cheerful submis- 
sion to what they consider as irremedia- 
ble evils, or irreparable losses. Whenever 
I saw occasion, or could do it without ap- 
pearing to be intrusive, I joined their par- 
ties, and gave my opinion upon the matter m 
discussion, which, if not always judicious, 
was always received indulgently. If wages 
were a little higher, or expected to be so, 
or the quartern loaf a little lower, or it was 
reported that onions and butter were ex- 
pected to fall, I was glad ; yet, if the con- 
trary w^ere true, I drew from opium some 
means of consoling myself. For opium (like 
the bee, that extracts its materials indis- 



an iBmlisb ©plum=:eater» 117 

criminately from roses and from the soot ^ of 
chimneys) can overrule all feelings into a 
compliance with the master-key. Some of 
these rambles led me to great distances ; for 
an opium-eater is too happy to observe the 
motion of time. And sometimes, in my 
attempts to steer homeward, upon nautical 
principles, by fixing my eye on the pole- 
star, and seeking ambitiously for a north- 
west passage, instead of circumnavigating^ 
-all the capes and headlands I had doubled 
^ my outward voyage, I came suddenly 
upon such knotty problems of alleys, such 
enigmatical entries, and such sphinx's rid- 
dles of streets without thoroughfares, a^ 
must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of por- 
ters, and confound the intellects of hack- 
ney-coachmen. I could almost have be- 

* In the large capacious himn ys of the rustic cot- 
tages thr. ughout the Lake district, you can see up 
the ntire cavity from the seat which you occupy, 
as an honored visitor, in tlie chimney-corner. There 
I used often to h.ar (though not to see) bees. Their 
murmuring was audible, though their bodily forms 
were too small to be visible at tl t altitude. On in- 
quiry, I found that soot (chiefly from wood and peats) 
was useful in some stage of their wax or honeys 
manufacture. 



118 ^be Contessions ot 

xeved, at times, that I must be the first dis- 
coverer of some of these terra incognita^ 
and doubted whether they had yet been laid 
down in the modern charts of London. 
For all this, however, I paid a heavy price 
in distant years, when the human face 
tyrannized over my dreams, and the perplex- 
ities of my steps in London came back and 
haunted my sleep, with the feeling of per- 
plexities moral or intellectual, that brought 
confusion to the reason, or anguish and 
remorse to the conscience. 

Thus, I have shown that opium does not, 
of necessity, produce inactivity or torpor; 
but that, on the contrary, it often led me 
into markets and theaters. Yet, in can- 
dor, I will admit that markets and theaters 
are not the appropriate haunts of the 
opium-eater, when in the divinest state 
incident to his enjoyment. In that state, 
crowds become an oppression to him ; 
music, even, too sensual and gross. He 
naturally seeks solitude and silence, as in- 
dispensable conditions of those trances, or 
profoundest reveries, which are the crown 
and consummation of what opium can do for 
human nature. I, whose disease it was to 



an Englteb ©plum^slEater. 119 

meditate too much and to observe too little, 
and who, upon my first entrance at college, 
was nearly falling into a deep melancholy, 
from brooding too much on the sufferings 
which I had witnessed in London, was 
sufficiently aware of the tendencies of my 
own thoughts to do all I couM to coun- 
teract tliem. I was., indeed, like a person 
who, according to the old legend, had en- 
tered the cave of Trophonius; and the rem- 
edies I sought were to force myself into 
society, and to keep my understanding in 
continual activity upon matters of science. 
But for these remedies, I should certainly 
have become hypochrondriacally melancholy. 
In after-years, however, when my cheer- 
fulness was more fully re-established, I 
yielded to my natural inclination for a 
solitary life. And at that time I often fell 
into these reveries upon taking opium ; and 
more than once it has happened to me, on 
a summer night, when I have been at an 
open window in a room from which I could 
overlook the sea at a mile below me, and 
could command a view of the great town of 
L , at about the same distance, that I 



120 XLbc Confessions of 

have sat from sunset to sunrise, motionless, 
and without wishing to move. 

I shall be charged with mysticism, Beh- 
menism, quietism, etc. ; but that shall not 
alarm me. Sir II. Vane, the younger, was 
was one of our wisest men; and let my 
reader see if he, in his philosophical works, 
be half as unmystical as I am. I say, then, 
that it has often struck me that the scene 
itself was somewhat typical of what took 

place in such a reverie. The town of L . 

represented the earth, with its sorrows and 
its graves left behind, yet not out of sight, 
nor wholly forgotten. The ocean, in ever- 
lasting but gentle agitation, and brooded 
over by dove-like calm, might not unfitly 
typify the mind, and tlie mood which then 
swayed it. For it seemed to me as if then 
first I stood at a distance, and aloof from 
the uproar of life; as if the tumult, the 
fever, and the strife were suspended; a 
respite granted from the secret burdens of 
the heart ; a Sabbath of repose ; a resting 
from human labors. Here were the hopes 
which blossom in the paths of life, recon- 
oiled with the peace which is in the grnve; 
motions of the intellect as unwearied as the 



an :!Engli6b ©pium^Bater^ 121 

heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon 
calm ; a tranquillity that seemed no product 
of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty 
and equal antagonisms; infinite activities, 
infinite repose. 

Oh, just, subtile, and mighty opium ! that 
to the hearts of poor and rich alike, for the 
wounds that will never heal, and for '' the 
pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel," bring, 
est an assuaging balm ; eloquent opium ! that 
with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the 
purposes of wrath, and to the guilty man, 
for one night givest back the hopes of his 
youth, and hands washed pure from blood; 
and, to the proud man, a brief oblivion for 

Wrongs unredressed, and insults unavenged 

that summonest to the chancery of dreams, 
for the triumphs of suffering innocence, 
false witnesses, and confoundest perjury, 
and dost reverse the sentences of un- 
righteous judges ; thou bulkiest upon the 
bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic 
imagery of the brain, cities and temples, 
beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles — 
beyond the splendor of Babylon and Heka- 



122 XLbc QontcssiowB of 

tompylos ; and, " from the anarchy of dream- 
ing sleep," callest into sunny light the faces 
of long-buried beauties, and the blessed 
household countenances, cleansed from the 
" dishonors of the grave." Thou only givest 
these gifts to man ; and thou hast the keys 
of Paradise, oh, just, subtile, and mighty 
opium ! 



an EnaliBb 0ptums:jEater* 123 



Introduction to the Pains of Opkim. 

Courteous, and, I hope, indulgent reader 
(for all my readers must be indulgent ones, 
or else, I fear, I shall shock them too much 
to count on their courtesy), having accom- 
panied me thus far, now let me request you 
to move onward, for about eight years ; that 
is to say, from 1804 (when I said that my 
acquaintance with opium first began) to 1812. 
The years of academic life are now over and 
gone — almost forgotten ; the student's cap 
no longer presses my temples ; if my cap 
exists at all, it presses those of some youth- 
ful scholar, I trust, as happy as myself, and 
as passionate a lover of knowledge. My 
g©wn is, by this time, I dare to say, in the 
same condition with many thousands of 
excellent books in the Bodleian, namely, 
diligently perused by certain studious moths 
and worms ; or departed, however (which is 
all that I know of its fate), to that great 



124 ^be ContC63\ons of 

reservoir of somewhere^ to which all the tea- 
cups, tea-caddies, tea-pots, tea-kettles, etc., 
have departed (not to speak of still frailer 
vessels, such as glasses, decanters, bed- 
makers, etc.), which occasional resemblances 
in the present generation of tea-cups, etc., 
remind me of having once possessed, but of 
whose departure and final fate I, in common 
with most gownsmen of either university, 
could give, I suspect, but an obscure and 
conjectural history. The persecutions of 
the chapel-bell, sounding its unwelcome 
summons to six-o'clock matins, interrupts 
my slumbers no longer ; the porter who 
rang it, upon whose beautiful nose (bronze, 
inlaid witli copper) I wrote, in retaliation, 
so many Greek epigrams while I was dress- 
ing, is dead, and has ceased to disturb any* 
body ; and I, and many others who suffered 
much from his tintinnabulous propensities, 
have now agreed to overlook his errors, and 
have forgiven him. Even with the bell I 
am now in charity ; it rings, I suppose, as 
formerly, thrice a day ; and cruelly annoys, 
I doubt not, many worthy gentlemen, and 
disturbs their peace of mind ; but, as to me, 
in this year 1812, I regard its treacherous 



an En^lisb ©ptum^Eaten 125 

voice no longer (treacherous I call it, for, by 
some refinement of malice, it spoke in as 
sweet and silvery tones as if it had been 
inviting one to a party) ; its tones have no 
longer, indeed, power to reach me, let the 
wind sit as favorable as the malice of the 
bell itself could wish ; for I am two hundred 
and fifty miles away from it, and buried in 
the depth of mountains. And what am 
I doing among the mountains ? Taking 
opium. Yes, but what else? Why, reader, 
in 1812, the year we are now arrived at, as 
well as for some years previous, I have been 
chiefly studying German metaphysics, in the 
writings of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, etc. 
And how, and in what manner, do I live ? 
in short, what class or description of men 
do I belong to ? I am at this period, namely, 
in 1812, living in a cottage ; and with a 
single female servant {honi soit qui mal y 
pense)^ who, among my neighbors, passes by 
the name of my "housekeeper." And, as 
a scholar and a man of learned education, 
and in that sense a gentleman, I may pre- 
sume to class myself as an unworthy mem- 
ber of that indefinite body called gentlemen. 
Partly on the ground I have assigned, per- 



126 ^bc QontC66lons of 

haps — partly because, from my having no 
visible calling or business, it is rightly 
judged that I must be living on my private 
fortune — I am so classed by my neighbors ; 
and, by the courtesy of modern England, I 
am usually addressed on letters, etc., Es- 
quire, though having, I fear, in the rigorous 
construction of heralds, but slender preten- 
sions to that distinguished honor — yes, in 
popular estimation, I am X. Y. Z. Esquire, 
hut not Justice of the Peace, nor Gustos 
Rostulorum. Am I married ? Not yet. 
And I still take opium ? On Saturday 
nights. And, perhaps, have taken it un- 
hlushingly ever since " the rainy Sunday,'* 
and "the stately Pantheon," and "the bea- 
tific druggist " of 1804? Even so. And how 
do I find my health after all this opium-eat- 
ing? in short, how do I do? Why, pretty 
well, I thank you, reader ; in the phrase of 
ladies in the straw, "as well as can be ex- 
pected." In fact, if I dared to say the real 
and simple truth ( must not be forgotten 
that hitherto I thought, to satisfy the theo- 
ries of medical men, I ought to be ill), I was 
never better in my life than in the spring 
of 1812 ; and I hope sincerely that the quan- 



an EngUsb ©piums^Eaten 127 

tity of claret, port, or " particular Madeira," 
which, in all probability, you, good reader, 
have taken, and design to take for every 
term of eight years during your natural life, 
may as little disorder your health as mine 
was disorder^rl by the opium I had taken 
for the eight year between 1804 and 1812. 
Hence, you may see again the danger of 
taking any medical advice from "Anasta- 
sius;"^ in divinity, for aught I know, or 
law, he may be a safe counselor, but not in 
medicine. No; ^t is far better to consult 
Dr. Buchan, as I did , for I never forgot that 
worthy man's excellent suggestion, and I 
was " particularly careful not to take above 
five-and-twentj^ ounces of laudanum." To 
this moderation and temperate use of the 
article I may ascribe it, I suppose, that as yet, 

* The reader of this generation will marvel at these 
repeated references to Anasta«ius ;" it is now an 
almost forgotten book, so vast has been the deluge of 
novel- writing talent, really ori inal and powerful, 
which has overflowed our liter^t • during the lapse 
of thirty-five years from the publi , at ion of these Con- 
fessions. '* Anastasius " was written by the famous 
and opulent Mr. Hope ; and was in 1821 a book both 
of high reputation and of great influence among the 
leading circles of society. 



128 Zbc QontcBSiowe ot 

at least (that is, in 1812), I am ignorant and 
unsuspicious of the avenging terrors which 
opium has in store for those who abuse its 
lenity. At the same time, I have been only 
a dilettante eater of opium; eight years' 
practice, even, with the single precaution of 
allowing sufficient intervals between every 
indulgence, has not been sufficient to make 
opium necessary to me as an article of daily 
diet. But now comes a different era. Move 
on, if you please, reader, to 1813. In the 
summer of the year we have just quitted I 
had suffered much in bodily health from 
distress of mind connected with a very 
melancholy event. This event, being no 
ways related to the subject now before me 
further than through bodily illness which 
it produced, I need not more particularly 
notice. Whether this illness of 1812 had 
any share in that of 1813, I know not ; but 
so it was, that, in the latter year, I was 
attacked by a most appalling irritation of 
the stomach in all respects the same as that 
which had caused me so much suffering in 
youth, and accompanied by a revival of all 
the old dreams. This is the point of my 
narrative on which, as respects my own self- 



an iBnQlisb ©ptum:sEatet» 129 

justification, the whole of what follows m^y 
be said to hinge. 

And here I find myself in a perplexing 
dilemma : Either, on the one hand, I must 
exhaust the reader's patience by such a detail 
of my malady, and of my struggles with it, 
as might suffice to establish the fact of my 
inability to wrestle any longer with irrita- 
tion and constant suffering ; or, on the other 
hand, by passing lightly over this critical 
part of my story, I must forego the benefit 
of a stronger impression left on the mind of 
the reader, and must lay myself open to the 
misconstruction of having slipped, by the 
easy and gradual steps of self-indulging 
persons, from the first to the final stage of 
ophim-eating (a misconstruction to which 
there will be a lurking predisposition in 
most readers, from my previous acknowledg- 
ments). This is the dilemma, the first horn 
of which would be sufficient to toss and gore 
any column of patient readers, though drawn 
up sixteen deep, and constantly relieved 
by fresh men ; consequently, that is not to 
be thought of. It remains, then, that I 
postulate so much as is necessary for my 

purpose. And let me take as full credit 
9 



130 Ube Confessions of 

for what I postulate as if I had demonstrated 
it, good reader, at the expense of your 
patience and my own. Be not so ungenerous 
as to let me suffer m your good opinion 
through my own forbearance and regard 
for your ( )mfort. No, belie v all that I ask 
of you, namely, that I could resist no longer 
— believe it liberally, and as an act of grace, 
or else in mere prudence ; for, if not then, in 
the next edition of my " Opium Confessions " 
revised and enlarged, I will riake you be- 
lieve, and tremble; and, a force d^ennuyery 
by mere dint of pandiculation, I will terrify 
all readers of mine from ever again question- 
ing any postulate that I shall think fit to 
make. 

This, then, let me repeat : I postulate that, 
at the time I began to take opium daily, I 
could not have done otherwise. Whether, 
indeed, afterward, I might not have suc- 
ceeded in breaking off the habit, even when 
it seemed to me that all efforts would be 
unavailing, and whether many of the in- 
numerable efforts which I did make might 
not have been carried much further, and my 
gradual reconquest of ground lost might 
not have been followed up much more 



an JBwQlieb ®pium^:eatcr» 131 

energetically — these are questions which I 
must decline. Perhaps I might make out 
a case of palliation ; but — shall I speak in- 
genuously ? — I confess it, as a besetting 
infirmity of mine, that I am too much of ^ 
Eudsemonist ; I hanker too much after a 
state of happiness, both for myself and 
others ; I cannot face misery, whether my 
own or not, with an eye of sufficient firm- 
ness; and am little capable of encountering 
present pain for the sake of any reversionary 
benefit. On some other matters, I can agree 
with the gentlemen in the c-otton trade ^ at 
Manchester in affecting the Stoic philosophy ; 
but not in this. Here I take the liberty of 
an Eclectic philosopher, and I look out for 
some courteous and considerate sect that 
will condescend more to the infirm condition 
of an opium-eater; that are 'sweet men, ' 
as Chaucer says, "to give absolution," ^nid 

* A handsome news-room, ot which I was veiy 
politely made free in passing through Maachest3r, by 
several gentlemen of that place is cailed i tnink, 
The Porch ; whence 1, who ^m a 6it%ii^^^ in Man- 
chester, inferred that the subscribers meant Lo profess 
themselves followers of Zeno. Bul 1 nave been Sinoe 
^ssaied that this is a mistake. 



132 ^bc Conte66ion6 of 

will show some conscience in the penances 
they inflict, and the efforts of abstinence 
they exact from poor sinners like myself. 
An inhuman moralist I can no more endure, 
in my nervous state, than opium that has 
not been boiled. At any rate, he who sum- 
mons me to send out a large freight of self- 
denial and mortification upon any cruising 
voyage of moral improvement must make it 
clear to my understanding tliat the concern 
is a hopeful one. At my time of life (six- 
and-thirty years of age) it cannot be sup- 
posed that I have much energy to spare ; in 
fact, I find it all little enough for the intel- 
lectual labors I have on my hands; and, 
therefore, let no man expect to frighten me 
by a few hard words into embarking any 
part of it upon desperate adventures of 
morality. 

Whether desperate or not, however, the 
issue of the struggle in 1813 was what I 
have mentioned ; and from this date the 
reader is to consider me as a regular and 
confirmed opium-eater, of whom to ask 
whether on any particular day he had or 
had not taken opium, would be to ask 
whether his lungs had performed respira- 



an iBnglisb ©pium5=Eatcn 133 

tion or the heart fulfilled its functions. 
You understand now, reader, what I am ; 
and you are by this time aware, that no old 
gentleman, " with a snow-white beard," will 
have any chance of persuading me to sur- 
render " the little golden receptacle of the 
pernicious drug." No ; I give notice to all, 
whether moralists or surgeons, that what- 
ever be their pretensions and skill in their 
respective lines of practice, they must not 
hope for any countenance from me, if they 
think to begin by any savage proposition 
for a Lent or Ramadan of abstinence from 
opium. This, then, being all fully under- 
stood between us, we shall in tuture sail 
before the wind. Now, then, reader, from 
1813, where all this time we have been 
sitting down and loitering, rise up, if you 
please, and walk forward about three years 
more. Now draw up the curtain, and you 
shall see me in a new character. 

11 any man, poor or rich, were to say 
that he would tell us what had been the 
happiest day in his life, and the why and the 
wherefore, I suppose that we should all cry 
out, Hear him ! hear him ! As to the hap- 
piest day, that must be very difficult for 



134 ^bc Conteasions of 

aDy wise man to name ; because any event 
that could occupy so distinguished a place 
in a man's retrospect of his life, or be en- 
titled to have shed a special felicity on any 
one day, ought to be of such an enduring 
character as that (accidents apart) it should 
have continued to shed the same felicity, or 
one not distinguishably less, on many years 
together. To the happiest lustrum^ how- 
ever, or even to the happiest year, it may be 
allowed to any man to point without dis- 
countenance from wisdom. This vear, in 
my case, reader, was the one which we have 
now reached ; though it stood, I confess, as 
a parenthesis between years of a gloomier 
character. It was a year of brilliant water 
(to speak after the manner of jewelers), set, 
as it were, and insulated in the gloom and 
cloudy melancholy of opium. Strange as it 
may sound, I had a little before this time 
descended suddenly, and without any con- 
siderable effort, from three hundred and 
twenty grains of opium (that is, eight ^ thou- 

* I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as 
equivalent to one grain of opium, which. I believe, is 
the common estimate. However, as both may bo 
considered variable quantities (the crude opium vary- 



an j£n0li6b ©piums=JEatet. 135 

sand drops of laudanum) per day, to forty 
grains, or one eighth part. Instantaneously, 
and as if by magic, the cloud of profoundest 
melancholy which rested upon my brain, 
like some black vapors that I have seen roll 
away from the summits of mountains, drew 
off in one day ; passed off with its murky 
banners as simultaneously as a ship that 
has been stranded and is floated off by a 
spring tide — 

That moveth altogether, if it move at all. 

Now, then, I was again happy: I now 
took only one thousand drops of laudanum 
per day — and what was that? A latter 
spring had come to close up the season of 
youth : my brain performed its functions as 
healthily as ever before, I read Kant again, 
and again I understood him, or fancied that 

ing much in strength, and the tincture stiU more), I 
suppose that no infinitesimal accuracy can he had in. 
such a calculation. Tea-spoons vary as much in size 
as opium in strength. Small ones hold ahout one 
hundred drops ; so that eight thousand drops are 
about eighty times a tea-spoonful. The reader sees 
how much I kept within Dr. Buchan's indulgent al- 
lowance. 



136 XTbe ContcQBions of 

I did. Again my feelings of pleasure ex- 
panded themselves to all around me ; and, 
if any man from Oxford or Cambridge, or 
from neither, had been announced to me in 
my unpretending cottage, I should have 
welcomed him with as sumptuous a recep- 
tion as so poor a man could offer. Whatever 
else was wanting to a wise man's happiness, 
of laudanum I would have given him as 
much as he wished, and in a golden cup. 
And, by the way, now that I speak of giving* 
laudanum away, I remember, about this 
time, a little incident, which I mention be- 
cause, trifling as it was, the reader will soon 
meet it again in my dreams, which it 
influenced more fearfully than could be im- 
agined. One day a Malay knocked at my 
door. What business a Malay could have 
to transact among English mountains, I can- 
not conjecture ; but possibly he was on his 
road to a seaport about forty miles dis- 
tant.* • 

* Between the seafaring populations on the coast 
of Lancashire, and the corresponding populations on 
on the coast of C^imberland (such as Ravenglass, 
Whitehaven, Workington, Maryport, etc.), there was 
a slender current of interchange constantly going on, 



an }Bn0li6b ©piums^Eater^ 137 

The servant who opened the door to him 
was a young girl, born and bred among the 
mountains, who had never seen an Asiatic 
dress of any sort : his turban, therefore, 
confounded her not a httle ; and as it turned 
out that his attainments in English were ex- 
actly of the same extent as hers in the 
Malay, there seemed to be an impassable 
gulf fixed between all communication of 
ideas, if either party had happened to 
possess any. In this dilemma, the girl, rec- 
ollecting the reputed learning of her master 

and especially in tlie days of press-gangs — in p? 
sea, but in part also by land. By the way, I may 
mention, as an interesting fact which I discovered 
Irom an almanac and itinerary, dated about the mid- 
dle of Queen Elizabeth's reign (say, 1579), that the 
official route in her days for queen's messengers to 
the north of Ireland, and, of course, for travelers 
generally, was not (as now) through Grasme'^e, anJ 
thence by St. John's Yale, Threlkeld (for the short- 
cut by Shoulthwaite Moss was then unki own). 
Keswick, Cockermouth, and Whitehaven. Up vo St, 
Oswald's Church, Gresmere (so it was then sp-ded, 
in deference to its Danish original), the route lav as 
at present. Thence it turned round the lake to the 
lett, crossed Hammerscar, up Little Langdale, acr<^s» 
Wryno&e to Egremont, and from Egremont to THd^*^^ 
haven. 



138 ^be Conte60lon9 of 

(and, doubtless, giving me credit for a knowl- 
edge of all the languages of the earth, 
besides, perhaps, a few of the lunar ones), 
came and gave me to understand that there 
w^as a sort of demon below, whom she 
clearly imagined that my art could exorcise 
from the house. I did not immediately go 
down; but when I did, the group which 
presented itself, arranged as it was by acci- 
dent, though not very elaborate, took hold 
of my fancy and my eye in a way that none 
of the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the 
ballets at the opera-house, though so osten- 
tatiously complex, had ever done. In a 
cottage kitchen, but paneled on the wall 
with dark wood, that from age and rubbing 
resembled oak, and looking more hke a 
rustic hall of entrance than a kitchen, stood 
the Malay, his turban and loose trousers of 
dingy white relieved upon the dark panel- 
ing; he had placed himself nearer to the 
girl than she seemed to relish, tliough her 
native spirit of mountain intrepidity con- 
tended with the feeling of simple awe which 
her countenance expressed as she gazed 
upon the tiger-cat before her. And a more 
striking picture there could not be imagined 



an iBmlieb ©pium=^Eater. 139 

than the beautiful English face of the girl, 
and its exquisite fairness, together with her 
erect and independent attitude, contrasted 
with the sallow and bilious skin of the 
Malay, enameled or veneered with mahogany 
by marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, 
thin lips, slavish gestures, and adorations. 
Half hidden by the ferocious-looking Malay 
was a little child from a neighboring cottage, 
who had crept in after him, and was now in 
the act of reverting his head and gazing 
upward at the turbrcU and the fiery eyes 
beneath it, while with one hand he caught 
at the dress of the young woman for pro- 
tection. 

My knowledge of the Oriental tongues is 
not remarkably extensive, being, indeed, 
confined to two words — the Arabic word for 
barley, and the Turkish for opium (mad- 
joon), which I have learned from " Anas- 
tasius." And, as I had neither a Malay 
dictionary, nor even Adelung's " Mithri- 
-dates," which might have helped me to a few 
words, I addressed him in some lines from 
the Iliad ; considering that, of such language 
as I possessed, the Greek, in point of long- 
itude, came geographically nearest to an 



140 ^be Contceeions of 

Oriental one. He worshiped me in a devout 
manner, and replied in what I suppose was 
Malay. In this way I saved my reputation 
with my neighbors ; for the Malay had no 
means of betraying the secret. He lay 
down upon the floor for about an hour, and 
then pursued his journey. On his departure 
I presented him with a piece of opium. To 
him, an Orientalist, I concluded that opium 
must be familiar, and the expression of his 
face convinced me that it was. Never- 
theless, I was struck with S3me little con- 
sternation wlien I saw him suddenly raise 
his hand to his mouth, and (in the school-boy 
phrase) bolt the whole, divided into three 
pieces, at one mouthful. The quantity was 
enough to kill three dragoons and their 
horses, and I felt some alarm for the poor 
creature ; but what could be done? I had 
given him the opium in compassion for his 
solitary life, on recollecting that, if he had 
traveled on foot from London, it must be 
nearly three weeks since he could have ex- 
changed a thought with any human being. 
I could not think of violating the laws 
of hospitality by having him seized and 
drenched with an emetic, and thus frighten- 



an Englieb ®piums=:6ater. 141 

ing him into a notion that we were going to 
sacrifice him to some English idol. No ; there 
was clearly no help for it. He took his leave, 
and for some days I felt anxious ; but, as I 
never heard of any Malay being found dead, 
1 became convinced that he was used ^ to 
opium, and that I must have done him the 
service I designed, by giving him one night 
of respite from the pains of wandering. 

This incident I have digressed tc: mention, 
because this Malay (partly from tn^ Dictur- 
esque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly 
from the anxiety I conn^Cosl with his image 

*This, liowever, is nota necessary conclusion : the 
varieties of effect produced by opium on dilTerent 
constitutions are infinite. A London magistrate 
(Harriott's "Struggles through Life," vol. iii.,p. 391, 
third edition ) has recorded that on the first occasion 
of his trying laudanum for the c^ut, he took fokty 
drops ; the next night sixty, and on the fifth night 
EIGHTY, without any effect whatever; and this at an 
advanced age. I have an anecdote from a country 
surgeon, however, which sinks Mr. Harriott's case 
into a trifle. And, in my projected medical treatise 
on opium, which I will publish provided the College 
of Surgeons will pay me for enlightening their 
benighted understandings upon this subject, I will 
relate it, but it is far too good a story to be published 
gratis. 



142 Cbe Confessiona ot 

for some days) fastened afterward upon my 
dreams, and brought other Malays with him 
worse than himself, that ran " amuck " * at 
me, and led me into a world of troubles. 
But to quit this episode, and to return ta 
my intercalary year of happiness. I have 
said ah'eady that on a subject so important 
to us all as happiness, we should listen with 
pleasure to any man's experience or experi- 
ments, even though he were but a plowboy, 
who cannot be supposed to have plowed 
very deep in such an intractable soil as that 
of human pains and pleasures, or to have 
conducted his researches upon any very 
enlightened principles. But I who have 
taken happiness, botli in a solid and a liquid 
shape, both boiled and unboiled, both East 
India and Turkey — who have conducted my 
experiments upon this interesting subject 
vv'ith a sort of galvanic battery — and have, 
for the general benefit of the world, in« 
oculated myself, as it were, with the poison 
of eight hundred drops of laudanum per day 

* See the common accounts, in any Eastern traveler 
or voyager, of the frantic excesses committed by 
Malays who have taken opium, or are reduced to 
desperation by ill-luck at gambling. 



an ]Engli6b (S)pium=jEater» 143 

(just for the same reason that a French 
surgeon inoculated himself lately with a 
cancer — an English one, twenty years ago, 
with plague — and a third, I know not of 
what nation, with hydrophobia) — I, it will 
be admitted, must surely know what hap- 
piness is, if anybody does. And therefore I 
Vn ill here lay down an analysis of happiness, 
and, as the most interesting mode of com- 
municating it, I will give it, not didactically, 
but wrapped up and involved in a picture of 
one evening, as I spent every evening during 
the intercalary j^ear when laudanum, though 
taken daily, was to me no more than the 
elixir of pleasure. This done, I shall quit 
the subject of happiness altogether, and pass 
to a very different one — the 2:>cnns of opium. 
Let there be a cottage, standing in a val- 
ley,* eighteen miles from any town ; no spa- 

* The cottage and the valley concerned in this de- 
scription were not imaginary ; the valley was the 
lovely one, in those days, of Grasmere ; and the 
cottage was occupied for more than twenty years by 
myself, as immediate successor, in the year 1809, to 
Wordsworth. Looking to the limitation here laid 
down — viz., in those days — the reader will inquire in 
what way Time can have affected the beauty of 
Grasmere. Do the Westmoreland valleys turn gray- 



144 XTbe Gonteeeions of 

cious valley, but about two miles long by 
three quarters of a mile in average width — 
the benefit of which provision is, that all the 
families resident within its circuit will com- 
pose, as it were, one large household, per- 
sonally familiar to your eye, and more or 

headed ? Oh reader ! this is a painful memento for 
some of us ! Thirty years ago a gang of Yandals 
(nameless, I thank Heaven, to me), for the sake of 
building a mail-coach road that never would be 
wanted, carried, at a cost of £3,000 to tlie defrauded 
parish, a horrid causeway of sheer granite masonry, 
for three quarters of a mile, right through the 
loveliest succession of secret forest dells and shy 
recesses of the lake, margined by unrivaled ferns, 
among which was the Osmunda regalis. This 
sequestered angle of Grasmere is described by 
Wordsworth, as it unveiled itself on a September 
morning, in the exquisite poems on the " Naming of 
Places." From this also— ^-/s;., this spot of ground, 
and this magnificent crest (the Osmunda)— was sug- 
gested that unique line— the finest independent line 
through all the records of verse — 

" Or lady of the lake, 
Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance." 

Rightly, therefore, did I introduce this limitation. 
The Grasmere before and after this outrage were 
two different vales. 



an J6n0li0b ©plumj^jEater. 145 

less interesting to your affections. Let the 
mountains be real mountains, between three 
and four thousand feet high, and the cottage 
a real cottage, not (as a witty author has it, 
*' a cottage with a double coach-house ; " let 
it be, in fact (for I must abide by the actual 
scene), a white cottage, embowered with flow- 
ering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succes- 
sion of flowers upon the walls, and clustering 
around the windows, through all the months 
of spring, summer, and autumn ; beginning, 
in fact, with May roses, and ending with 
jasmine. Let it, however, not be spring, nor 
summer, nor autumn; but winter, in its 
sternest shape. This is a most important 
point in the science of happiness. And I 
am surprised to see people overlook it and 
think it matter of congratulation that winter 
is going, or, if coming, is not likely to be a 
severe one. On the contrary, I put up a 
petition, annually, for as much snow, hail, 
frost, or storm of one kind or other, as the 
skies can possibly afford us. Surely every- 
body is aware of the divine pleasures which 
attend a winter fireside — candles at four 
o'clock, warm hearth-rugs, tea, a fair tea- 
maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in 
10 



146 XTbe Conteeeione of 

ample draperies on the floor, wliile the wind 
and rain are raging audibly without, 

And at the doors and windows seem to call 
As heaven and earth they would together mell 
Yet the least entrance find they none at all ; 
Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall. 

Castle of Indolence, 

All these are items in the description of a 
winter evening which must surely be fa- 
miliar to everybody born in a high latitude. 
And it is evident that most of these delica- 
cies, like ice-cream, require a very low tem- 
perature of the atmosphere to produce 
them; they are fruits which cannot be 
ripened without weather stormy or inclem- 
ent, in some way or other. I am not 
^^ particular^'' as people say, Avhether it be 
snow, or black frost, or wind so strong that 

(as Mr. ^ says) " you may lean your back 

against it like a post." I can put up even 
with rain, provided that it rains cats and 
dogs; but something of the sort I must 
have ; and if I have not, I think myself m a 
manner ill-used, for why am I called on to 
pay so heavily for winter, in coals, and 

* Mr. Anti-Slavery Clarkson. 



an lEwQlisb ©plum^JEater. 147 

candles, and various privations that will 
occur even to gentlemen, if I am not to have 
the article good of its kind? No: a Cana- 
dian winter, for my money ; or a Russian 
one, where every man is but a coproprietor 
with the nortli wind in the fee-simple of 
his own ears. Indeed, so great an epicure 
am I in this matter, that I cannot relish a 
winter night fully, if it be much past St. 
Thomas's day, and have degenerated into 
disgusting tendencies to vernal appearances ; 
no, it must be divided by a thick wall of 
dark nights from all return of light and 
sunshine. From the latter weeks of October 
to Christmas-eve, therefore, is the period 
during which happiness is in season, which, 
in my judgment, enters the room with a 
tea-tray ; for tea, though ridiculed by those 
who are naturally of coarse nerves, or are 
become so from wine-drinking, and are not 
susceptible of influence from so refined a 
stimulant, will always be the favorite bever- 
age of the intellectual ; and, for my part, I 
would have joined Dr. Johnson in a bellum 
internecinum against Jonas Hanway, or any 
other impious person who should presume 
to disparage it. But here, to save myself 



148 XLbc Contceeions of 

the trouble of too much verbal description, 
I will introduce a painter, and give him 
directions for the rest of the picture. Paint- 
ers do not like white cottages, unless a 
good deal weather-stained ; but, as the 
reader now understands that it is a winter 
night, his services will not be required 
except for the inside of the house. 

Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by 
twelve, and not more than seven and a half 
feet high. This, reader, is somewhat am- 
bitiously styled, in my family, the drawing- 
room ; but being contrived " a double debt 
to pay," it is also, and more justly, termed 
the library ; for it happens that books are 
the only article of property in which I am 
richer than my neighbors. Of these I have 
about five thousand, collected gradually 
since my eighteenth year. Therefore, 
painter, put as many as you can into this 
room. Make it populous with books, and, 
furthermore, paint me a good fire ; and furni- 
ture plain and modest, befitting the unpre- 
tending cottage of a scholar. And near the 
fire paint me a tea-table ; and (as it is clear 
that no creature can come to see one, such 
a stormy night) place only two cups and 



an iBmliBb ©plum^^JEater* 149 

saucers on the tea-tray ; and, if you know 
how to paint such a thing symbolically, or 
otherwise, paint me an eternal tea-pot — 
eternal a parte ante^ and ci parte post ; for I 
usually drink tea from eight o'clock at night 
to four in the morning. And, as it is very 
unpleasant to make tea, or to pour it out for 
one's self, paint me a lovely young woman, 
sitting at the table. Paint her arms like 
Aurora's, and her smiles like Hebe's— but 
no, dear M. , not even in jest let me insinu- 
ate that thy power to illuminate my cottage 
rests upon a tenure so perishable as mere 
personal beauty ; or that the witchcraft of 
angelic smiles lies within the empire of any 
earthly pencil. Pass, then, my good painter, 
to something more within its power; and 
the next article brought forward should 
naturally be myself— a picture of the opium- 
eater, with his " little golden receptacle of 
the pernicious drug " lying beside him oa 
the table. As to the opium, I have no ob- 
jection to see a picture of that, though I 
would rather see the original; you may 
paint it, if you choose ; but I apprise you 
that no " little " receptacle would, even in 
1816, answer nvy purpose, who was at a dis- 



150 Zbc Contcseione of 

tance from the " stately Pantheon," and all 
druggists (mortal or otherwise). No ; you 
may as well paint the real receptacle, which 
was not of gold, but of glass, and as much 
like a wine-decanter as possible. Into this 
you may put a quart of ruby-colored lau- 
danum ; that, and a book of German meta- 
physics placed by its side, will sufficiently 
attest my being in the neighborhood ; but 
as to myself, there 1 demur. 1 admit that, 
naturally, 1 ought to occupy the foreground 
of the picture ; that, being the hero of the 
piece, or (if you choose) the criminal at the 
bar, my body should be had into court. This 
seems reasonable ; but why should 1 con- 
fess, on this point, to a painter? or, why 
confess at all ? If the public (into whose 
private ear I am confidentially whispering 
my confessions, and not into any painter's) 
should chance to have framed some agree- 
able picture for itself of the opium-eater's 
exterior — should have ascribed to him, 
romantically, an elegant person, or a hand- 
some face, why should I barbarously tear 
from it so pleasing a delusion — pleasing both 
to the public and to me? No: paint me, if 
at all, according to your own fancy ; and, as 



an JBwQUeb ©pium=JEater. 151 

a painter^s fancy should teem with beautiful 
creations, I cannot fail, in that way. to bo 
a gainer. And now, reader, we have run 
through all the ten categories of my condi- 
tion, as it stood about 1816-17, up to the 
middle of which latter year I judge myself 
to have been a happy man ; and the elements 
of that happiness I have endeavored to place 
before you, in the above sketch of the in. 
terior of a scholar's library— in the cottage 
among the mountains, on a stormy winter 
evening. 

But now farewell, a long farewell to hap- 
piness, winter or summer ! farewell to smiles 
and laughter ! farewell to peace of mind ! 
farewell to hope and to tranquil dreams, 
and to the blessed consolations of sleep! 
For more than three years and a half I am 
summoned away from these ; I am now ar- 
rived at an Iliad of woes ; for I have now to 
record. 



152 ^be Gonte60ion6 ot 



The Pains of Opium. 



-as when some great painter dips 



His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse, 

Shelley^ s Ilevolt of Islam, 

Reader who have thus far accompanied 
nie, I must request your attention to a brief 
explanatory note on three points : 

1. For several reasons I have not been 
able to compose the notes for this part of 
my narrative into any regular and connected 
shape. I give the notes disjointed as I 
find them, or have now .drawn them up 
from memory. Some of them point to their 
own date ; some I have dated ; and some 
are undated. Whenever it could answer 
my purpose to transplant them from the 
natural or chronological order, I have not 
scrupled to do so. Sometimes I speak in 
the present, sometimes in the past, tense. 
Few of the notes, perhaps, were written 
exactly at the period of time to which they 
relate; but this can little affect their aC' 




I saw through vast avenues of gloom these 
towering gates of ingress." 



an lEmlieb ©pium:=:i6ater^ 153 

curacy, as the impressions were such that 
they can never fade from my mind. Much 
has been omitted. I could not, without 
effort, constrain myself to the task of either 
recalling, or constructing into a regular 
narrative, the whole burden of horrors which 
lies upon my brain. This feeling, partly, I 
plead in excuse, and partly that I am now 
in London, and am a helpless sort of person 
who cannot even arrange his own papers 
without assistance; and I am separated 
from the hands which are wont to perform 
for me the offices of an amanuensis. 

2. You will think, perhaps, that I am* 
too confidential and communicative of my 
own private history. It may be so. But 
my way of writing is rather to think aloud, 
and follow my own private humors, than 
much to consider who is listening to me ; 
and, if I stop to consider what is proper to 
be said to this or that person, I shall soon 
come to doubt whether any part of all is 
proper. The fact is, I place myself at a 
distance of fifteen or twenty years ahead of 
this time, and suppose myself writing to 
those who will be interested about me here- 
after ; and wishing to have some record of 



154 XLbc Contcseions ot 

a time, the entire history of which no one 
can know bnt myself, I do it as fally as I 
am able with the efforts I am now capable 
of making, because I know not whether I 
can ever find time to do it again. 

3. It will occur to you often to ask, Why 
did I not release myself from the horrors of 
opium by leaving it off, or diminishing it? 
To this 1 must answer briefly ; it might be 
supposed that 1 yielded to the fascinations 
of opium too easily; it cannot be supposed 
that any man can be charmed by its terrors. 
The reader may be sure, therefore, that I 
made attempts innumerable to reduce the 
quantity. I add, that those who witnessed 
the agonies of those attempts, and not 
myself, were the first to beg me to desist. 
But could not I have reduced it a drop a 
day, or, by adding water, have bisected or 
trisected a drop? A thousand drops bi- 
sected would thus have taken nearly six 
years to reduce ; and that they would cer- 
tainly not have answered. But this is a 
common mistake of those who know noth- 
ing of opium experimentally; I appeal to 
those who do, whether it is not always lound 
that down to a certain point it can be 



an JBrxQlieb Qvinm^JBntct. 155 

reduced with ease, and even pleasure, but 
that, a^ter that point, furtlier reduction 
causes intense suffering. Yes, say many 
thoughtless persons, who know not what 
they are talking of, you will suffer a little 
low spirits and dejection, for a few days. I 
answer, no; there is nothing like low 
spirits ; on the contrary, the mere animal 
spirits are uncommonly raised ; the pulse is 
Improved; the health is better. It is not 
there that the suffering lies. It has no 
resemblance to the sufferings caused by re- 
nouncing wine. It is a state of unutterable 
irritation of stomach (which surely is not 
much like dejection), accompanied by in- 
tense perspirations, and feelings such as I 
shall not attempt to describe without more 
space at my command. 

I shall now enter ' ' in medias res^'' and 
shall anticipate, for a time when my opium 
pains might be said to be at their acme^ aa 
account of their palsying effects on the in- 
tellectual faculties. 

My studies have now been long inter- 
rupted. I cannot read to myself with any 
pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance. 
i"et I read aloud sometimes for the pleasure 



156 XTbe Conteeelone of 

of others ; because reading is an accomplish- 
ment of mine, and, in the slang use of the 
word accomplishment as a superficial and 
ornamental attainment, almost the only one 
I possess ; and formerly if I had any vanity 
at all connected with any endowment or 
attainment of mine, it was with this ; for I 
had observed that no accomplishment was 
so rare. Players are the worst readers of 

all : reads vilely ; and Mrs. , who is 

so celebrated, can read nothing well but 
dramatic compositions; Milton she cannot 
read suflferably. People in general either 
read poetry without any passion at all, or 
else overstep the modesty of nature, and 
read not like scholars. Of late, if I have 
felt moved by anything in books, it has 
been by the grand lamentations of Samson. 
Agonistes, or the great harmonies of the 
Satanic speeches in "Paradise Regained,'* 
when read aloud by myself. A young lady 
sometimes comes and drinks tea with us; 
at her request and M.'s, I now and thea 

read W 's poems to them. (W., by the 

bye, is the only poet I ever met who could 
read his own verses ; of ten, indeed, he reads 
admirably.) 



an }£n0li6b iS^pium^iEatcr* 167 

For nearly two years I believe that I 
read no book but one ; and I owe it to the 
author, in discharge of a great debt of 
gratitude, to mention what that was. The 
sublimer and more passionate poets I still 
read, as I have said, by snatches and occa- 
sionally. But my proper vocation, as I well 
knew, was the exercise of the analytic under- 
standing. Now, for the most part, analytic 
studies are continuous, and not to be pursued 
by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. 
Mathematics, for instance intellectual phi- 
losophy, etc., were all become insupportable 
to me ; I shrunk from them with a sense of 
powerless and infantine feebleness that gave 
me an anguish the greater from remember- 
ing the time when I grappled with them to 
my own hourly delight, and for this further 
reason, because I had devoted the labor of 
my whole life, and had dedicated my intel- 
lect, blossoms and fruits, to the slow and 
elaborate toil of constructing one singJe 
work, to which I had presumed to give the 
title of an unfinished work of Spinosa's, 
namely, " De Emendatione Humani Intel- 
lectlis." This was now lying locked up as 
by frost, like any Spanish bridge or aqueduct. 



158 Ube Conte66ion6 of 

begun upon too great a scale for the resources 
of the architect ; and, instead of surviving 
me as monument of wishes at least, and 
aspirations, and a life of labor dedicated to 
the exaltation of human nature in that way 
in which God had best fitted me to promote 
so great an object, it was likely to stand a 
memorial to my children of hopes defeated, 
of baffled efforts, of materials uselessly ac- 
cumulated, of foundations laid that were 
never to support a superstructure, of the 
grief and the ruin of an architect. In this 
state of imbecility, I had, for amusement, 
turned my attention to political economy ; 
my understanding, which formerly had been, 
as active and restless as a liyena, could not, 
I suppose (so long as I lived at all), sink 
into utter lethargy ; and political economy 
offers this advantage to a person in my state, 
that though it is eminently an organio 
science (no part, that is to say, but what acts 
on the whole, as the whole again reacts oa 
each part), yet the several parts may be de- 
tached and contemplated singly. Great as 
was the prostration of my powers at this time, 
yet I could not forget my knowledge ; and 
my understanding had been for too many 



an Bn^lisb ®piums:iEater* 159 

years intimate with severe thinkers, with 
logic, and the great masters of knowledge, 
not to be aware of the utter feebleness of 
the main herd of modern economists. I had 
been led in 1811 to look into loads of books 
and pamphlets on many branches of econo- 
my ; and, at my desire, M. sometimes read 
to me chapters from more recent works, or 
parts of parliamentary debates. I saw that 
these were generally the very dregs and 
rinsings of the human intellect; and that 
any ma. of sound head, and practiced in 
wielding logic with scholastic adroitness, 
might take up the whole academy of modern 
economists, and throttle them between 
heaven and earth with his finger and thumb, 
or bray their fungous heads to powder with 
a lady's fan. At length, in 1819, a friend 
in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo's 
book ; and, recurring to my own prophetic 
anticipation of the advent of some legislator 
for this science, I said, before I had finished 
the first chapter, " Thou art the man ! '* 
Wonder and curiosity were emotions that 
had long been dead in me. Yet I wondered 
once more: I wondered at myself that I 
could oiioe again be stimulated to the effort 



160 tEbe Confe60ion6 ot 

of reading ; and much more I wondered at 
the book. Had this profound work been 
really written in England during the nine- 
teenth century ? Was it possible ? I sup- 
posed thinking^ had been extinct in England. 
Could it be that an EngUshman, and he not 
in academic bowers, but oppressed by mer- 
cantile and senatorial cares, had accom- 
plished what all the universities of Europe, 
and a century of thought, had failed even 
to advance by one hair^s breadth ? All other 
writers had been crushed and overlaid by 
the enormous weights of facts and docu- 
ments ; Mr. Ricardo had deduced, d priori, 
from the understanding itself, laws which 
first gave a ray of light into the unwieldy 
chaos of materials, and had constructed what 
had been but a collection of tentative dis- 
cussions into a science of regular propor- 

* The reader must remember what I here mean by 
Ihhiking; because, else, this would be a very presump- 
tuous expression. England, of late, has been rich 
to excess mfine thinkers, in the departments of crea- 
tive and combining thought ; but there ,is a sad 
dearth of masculine thinkers in any analytic path. 
A Scotchman of eminent name has lately told us 
that he is obliged to quit even mathematics for want 
of encouragement. 



an JErxQlieb ©pium^JEatct^ lei 

tions, now first standing on an eternal 
basis. 

Thus did one simple work of a profound 
understanding avail to give me a pleasure 
and an activity which I had not known for 
years ;— it roused me even to write, or, at 
least, to dictate what M. wrote for me. It 
seemed to me that some important truths 
had escaped even " the inevitable eye " of 
Mr. Ricardo; and, as these were, for the 
most part, of such a nature that I could ex- 
press or illustrate them, more briefly and 
elegantly by algebraic symbols than in the 
nsual clumsy and loitering diction of econ- 
omists, the whole would not have filled a 
pocket-book ; and being so brief, with M. for 
my amanuensis, even at this time, incapable 
as I was of all general exertion, I drew up my 
^'Prolegomena to all Future Systems of Polit- 
ical Economy." I hope it will not be found 
redolent of opium; though, indeed, to most 
people, the subject itself is a sufficient opiate. 
This exertion, however, w^as but a tem- 
porary fiash, as the sequel showed ; for I 
designed to publish my work. Arrange- 
ments were made at a provincial press, 
about eighteen miles distant, for printing 



162 ^be Conte96ion6 of 

it. An additional compositor was retained 
for some days on this account. The work 
was even twice advertised ; and I was, in a 
manner, pledged to the fulfilhnent of my 
intention. But I had a preface to write ; 
and a dedication, wliich I wished to make 
a splendid one, to Mr. Ricardo. I found 
myself quite unable to accomplish all this. 
The arrangements were countermanded, the 
compositor dismissed, and my " prolegom- 
ena " rested peacefully by the side of its 
elder and more dignified brother. 

I have thus described and illustrated my 
intellectual torpor, in terms that apply, 
more or less, to every part of the four years 
during which I was under the Circean spells 
of opium. But for misery and suffering, I 
might, indeed, be said to have existed in a 
dormant state. I seldom could prevail on 
myself to write a letter ; an answer of a few 
words, to any that I received, was tho 
utmost that I could accomplish ; and often 
that not until the letter had lain weeks, or 
even months, on my writing-table. With- . 
out the aid of M., all records of bills paid, 
or to he paid, must have perished; and my 
whole domestic economy, whatever became 



an jBrxQlieb ©ptum^iEater* 163 

of Political Economy, must have gone into 
irretrievable confusion. I shall not after- 
ward allude to this part of the case ; it is 
one, however, which the opium-eater will 
find, in the end, as oppressive and torment- 
ing as any other, from the sense of inca- 
pacity and feebleness, from the direct emba- 
rassments incident to the neglect or procras- 
tination of each day's appropriate duties, 
and from the remorse which must often ex- 
asperate the stings of these evils to a re- 
flective and conscientious mind. The opium- 
eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or 
aspirations; he wishes and longs as ear- 
nestly as ever to realize what he believes 
possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; 
but his intellectual apprehension of what is 
possible infinitely outruns his power, not of 
execution only, but even of power to attempt. 
He lies under the weight of incubus and 
nightmare ; he lies in sight of all that he 
would fain perform, just as a man forcibly 
confined to his bed by the mortal languor of 
a relaxing disease, who is compelled to 
witness injury or outrage offered to some 
object of his tenderest love : he curses the 
spells which chain him down from motion; 



164 ^be Confessions of 

he would lay down his life if he might but 
get up and walk ; but he is powerless as an 
Infant, and cannot even attempt to rise. 

I now pass to what is the main subject of 
these latter confessions, to the history and 
journal of what took place in my dreams; 
for these were the immediate and proximate 
cause of my acutest suffering. 

The first notice I had of any important 
change going on in this part of my physical 
economy, was from the rea waking of a state 
of eye generally incident to childhood, or 
exalted states of. irritability. I know not 
whether my reader is aware that many 
children, perhaps most, have a power of 
painting, as it were, upon the darkness, all 
Borts of phantoms : in some that power is 
simply a mechanic affection of the eye; 
others have a voluntary or semi- voluntary 
power to dismiss or summon them ; or, as a 
child once said to me, when I questioned 
him on this matter, " I can tell them to go, 
and they go ; but sometimes they come 
when I don't tell them to come." Where- 
upon I told him that he had almost as un- 
limited a command over apparitions as a 
Roman centurion over his soldiers. In the 



an jEn^lieb ©pium^jeatet* 165 

middle of 1817, I think it was, that this 
faculty became positively distressing to me r 
at night, when I lay awake in bed, vast pro- 
cessions passed along in mournful pomp; 
friezes of never-ending stories, that to my 
feelings were as sad and solemn as if they 
were stories drawn from ^imes before (CEdi- 
pus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis. 
And, at the same time, a corresponding 
change took place in my dreams ; a theater 
seemed suddenly opened and lighted up 
within my brain, which presented, nightly, 
spectacles of more than earthly splendor. 
And the four following facts may be men- 
tioned, as noticeable at this time : 

I. That, as the creative state of the eve 
increased, a sympathy seemed to arise 
between the waking and the dreaming 
states of the brain in one point — that what- 
soever I happened to call up and to trace 
by a voluntary act upon the darkness was 
very apt to transfer itself to my dreams ; 
so that I feared to exercise this faculty ; for, 
as Midas turned all things to gold, that yet 
balfled his hopes and defrauded his human 
desires, so whatsoever things capable of 
being visually represented I did but think 



166 ZTbe ConU56iom of 

of in the darkness, immediately shaped 
themselves into phantoms of the eye; and, 
by a process apparently no less inevitable, 
when thus once traced in faint and visionary 
colors, like writings in sympathetic ink, 
they were drawn out, by the fierce chemis- 
try of my dreams, into insufl:erable splendor 
that fretted my heart. 

II. For this, and all other changes in my 
dreams, were accompanied by deep-seated 
anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as 
are wholly incommunicable by words. I 
seemed every night to descend — not met- 
aphorically, but literally to descend — into 
chasms and sunless abysses, depths below 
depths, from which it seemed hopeless that 
I could ever reascend. Xor did I, by wak- 
ing, feel that I had reascended. This I do 
not dwell upon ; because the state of gloom 
which attended these gorgeous spectacles, 
amounting at least to utter darkness, as of 
some suicidal despondency, cannot be ap- 
proached by words. 

III. The sense of space, and in the end 
the sense of time, were both powerfully 
affected. Buildings, landscapes, etc., were 
exhibited in proportions so vast as the 



an JEwQlieb ©pium:=Sater^ 167 

bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space 
swelled, and was amplified to an extent of 
unutterable infinity. This, however, did 
not disturb me so much as the vast expan- 
sion of time. I sometimes seemed to have 
lived for seventy or one hundred years in 
one night ; nay, sometimes had feelings rep- 
resentative of a millennium, passed in that 
time, or, however, of a duration far beyond 
the limits of any human experience. 

ly. The minutest incidents of childhood, 
or forgotten scenes of later years, were often 
revived. I could not be said to recollect 
them ; for if I had been told of them when 
waking, I should not have been able to 
acknowledge them as parts of my past ex- 
perience. But placed as they were before 
me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in 
all their evanescent circumstances and ac- 
companying feelings, I recognized them in- 
stantaneously. I was once told by a near 
relative of mine, that having in her child- 
hood fallen into a river, and being on the 
very verge of death but for the critical assist- 
ance which reached her, she saw in a mo* 
ment her whole life, in its minutest inci- 
dents, arrayed before her simultaneously as 



168 Zbc Contceeions ot 

in a mirror ; and she had a faculty developed 
as suddenly for comprehending the whole 
and every part.^ This, from some opium 

* The heroine of this remarkable case was a girl 
about nine years old; and there can be little doubt 
that she looked down as far within the crater of 
death — that awful volcano — as any human being ever 
can have done that has lived to draw back and to 
report her experience. Xot less than ninety years 
did she survive this memorable escape; and I may 
describe her as in all respects a woman of remarkable 
and interesting qualities. She enjoyed, throughout; 
her long life, as the reader will readily infer, serene 
and cloudless health; had a masculine understand- 
ing; reverenced truth not less than did the Evangel- 
ists ; and led a life of saintly devotion, such as might 
have glorified ^^ Illlarlon or PauV [The words in 
italic are Ariosto's.] I mention these traits as char- 
acterizing her in a memorable extent, that the reader 
may not suppose himself relying upon a dealer in 
exaggerations, upon a credulous enthusiast, or upon 
a careless wielder of language. Forty five years had 
intervened between the first time and the last time 
of her telling me this anecdote, and not one iota had 
shifted its ground among the incidents, nor had any 
the most trivial of the circumstantiations suffered 
change. The scene of the accident was the least of 
valleys, what the Greeks of old would have called an. 
ayKoq^ and we English should properly call a delU 
Human tenant it had none ; even at noonday it was a 
solitude ; and would oftentimes have been a silent 



an Bnglisb (S)pium=J6ater* 169 

experiences of mine, I can believe ; I have, 
indeed, seen the same thing asserted twice 

solitude but for the brawling of a brook — not broad, 
but occasionally deep — which ran along the base of 
the little hills. Into this brook, probably into one 
of its dangerous pools, the child fell; and, according 
to the ordinary chances, she could have had but a 
slender jDrospect indeed of any deliverance, for, 
although a dwelling-house was close by, it was shut 
out from view by the undulations of the ground. 
How long the child lay in the water was probably 
never inquired earnestly until the answer had become 
irrecoverable ; for a servant, to whose care the child 
was then confided, had a natural interest in suppress- 
ing the whole case. From the child's own account, 
it should seem that asphyxia must have announced 
its commencement. A process of struggle and deadly 
suffocation was passed through half consciously. 
This process terminated by a sudden blow apparently 
on or in the brain, after which there was no pain or 
conflict; but in an instant succeeded a dazzling rush 
of light; immediately after which came the solemn 
apocalypse of the entire past life. Meantime, the 
child's disappearance in the water had happily been 
witnessed by a farmer who rented some fields in this 
little solitude, and by rare accident was riding through 
them at the moment. Not being very well mounted, 
he was retarded by the hedges and other fences in 
making his way down to the w^ater; some time was 
thus lost; but once at the spot, he leaped in, booted 
and spurred, and succeeded in delivering one that 



170 ^be Confessions of 

.11 modern books, and accompanied by a 
remark which I am convinced is true, namely 
that the dread book of account, which the 
Scriptures speak of, is, in fact, the mind 
itself of each individual. Of this, at least, 
I feel assured, that there is no such thing as 
forgetting possible to the mind ; a thousand 
accidents may and will interpose a veil 
between our present consciousness and the 
secret inscriptions on the mind. Accidents 
of the same sort will also rend away this 
veil ; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, 
the inscription remains forever; just as the 
stars seem to withdraw before the common 
light of day, whereas, in fact, we all know 
that it is the light which is drawn over them 
as a veil ; and that they are waiting to be 
revealed, when the obscuring daylight shall 
have withdrawn. 

Having noticed these four facts as memo- 
rably distinguishing my dreams from those 
of health, I shall now cite a case illustrative 
of the first fact ; and shall then cite any 
others that I remember, either in their 

must have been as nearly counted among the popu- 
lations of the grave as perhar)s the laws of the shad* 
owy world can suffer to return. 



an JErxQliBb ©piums^iEater* 171 

chronological order, or any other that may 
give them more effect as pictures to the 
reader. 

I had been in youth, and even since, for 
occasional amusement, a great reader of 
Livy, whom I confess that I prefer, both for 
style and matter, to any other of the Roman 
historians ; and I had often felt as most 
solemn and appalling sounds, and most 
emphatically representative of the majesty 
of the Roman people, the two words so 
often occurring in Livy — Consul JRomanus / 
especially when the consul is introduced in 
his military character. I mean to say that 
the words king, sultan, regent, etc., or any 
other titles of those who embody in their 
own persons the collective majesty of a 
great people, had less power over my rev- 
erential feelings. I had, also, though no 
great reader of history, made myself min- 
utely and critically familiar with one period 
of English history, namely, the period of the 
Parliamentary War, having been attracted 
by the moralgrandeur of some who figured 
in that day, and by the many interesting 
memoirs which survive those unquiet times. 
Both these parts of xny lighter reading', 



172 ^bc Contc66ion6 of 

having furnished me often with matter of re- 
flection, now f urnisli me with matter for my 
dreams. Often I used to see, after painting 
upon the blank darkness, a sort of rehearsal 
while waking, a crowd of ladies, and perhaps 
a festival and dances. And I heard it said, 
or I said to myself, "These are English 
ladies from the unhappy times of Charles I. 
These are the wives and daughters of those 
who met in peace, and sat at the same tables, 
and were allied by marriage or by blood; 
and yet, after a certain day in August, 
1642,^ never smiled upon one another again, 
nor met but in the field of battle ; and at 
Marston Moor, at Newbury, or at Nasebjr, 

* I tiiink (but at the moment have no means of 
verifying my conjecture) that this day was the 24th of 
August. On or about that day Charles raised the royal 
standard at Nottingham ; which, ominously enough 
(considering the strength of such superstitions in the 
seventeenth century, and among the generations of 
that century, more especially in this particular gen- 
eration of the Parliamentary War), was blown down 
during the succeeding night. Let me remark, in 
passing, that no falsehood can virtually be greater or 
more malicious than that which imputes to Arch- 
bishop Laud a special or exceptional faith in such 
mute warnings. 



an Englleb ©pium^Eatet. 173 

cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel 
saber, and washed away in blood the memory 
of ancient friendship." The ladies danced, 
and looked as lovely as the court of George 
IV. Yet I knew, even in my dream, that 
they had been in the grave for nearly two 
centuries. This pageant would suddenly 
dissolve ; and at a clapping of hands would 
be heard the heart-quaking sound of Con- 
sul Romamis ; and immediately came 
*-' sweeping by," in gorgeous paludaments, 
Paulus or Marius, girt around by a company 
of centurions, with the crimson tunic hoisted 
on a spear, and followed by the alalagiiios 
of the Roman legions. 

Many years ago, when I was looking over 
Piranesi's " Antiquities of Rome," Mr. 
Coleridge, who was standing by, described 
to me a set of plates by that artist, called 
his " Dreams," and which record the scenery 
of his own visions during the delirium of a 
fever. Some of them (I describe only from 
memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) repre- 
sented vast Gothic halls, on the floor of which 
stood all sorts of engines and machinery, 
wheels, cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, 
etc., expressive of enormous power put forth, 



174 Cbe ConUssions of 

and resistance overcome. Creeping along 
the sides of the walls, you perceived a 
staircase ; and upon it, groping his way 
upward, was Piranesi himself. Follow 
the stairs a little further, and you perceive 
it to come to a sudden, abrupt termination, 
without any balustrade, and allowing no 
step onward to him who had reached the 
extremity, except into the depths below. 
Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi, 
you suppose, at least, that his labors must 
in some way terminate here. But raise 
your eyes, and behold a second flight of 
stairs still higher ; on which again Piranesi 
is perceived, by this time standing on the 
very brink of the abyss. Again elevate 
your eyes, and a still more aerial flight of 
stan-s is beheld ] and again is poor Piranesi 
busy on his aspiring labors ; and so on, until 
the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are 
lost in the upper gloom of the hall. With 
the same power of endless growth and self- 
reproduction did my architecture proceed 
in dreams. In the early stage of my malady, 
the splendors of my dreams were indeed 
chiefly architectural ; and I beheld such 
pomp of cities and palaces as was never yet 



an iBmlieb ©ptum:=]Eater. 175 

beheld by the wakmg eye, unless in the 
clouds. From a great modern poet ^ I cite 
the part of a passage which describes, as an 
appearance actually beheld in the clouds, 
what in many of its circumstances I saw 
frequently in sleep : 

The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, 
Was of a mighty city — ^boldly say 
A wilderness of building, sinking far 

* What poet ? It was Wordsworth ; and why did 
I not formally name him ? This throws a light back- 
ward upon the strange history of Wordsworth's 
reputation. The year in which I wrote and published 
these Confessions was 1821 ; and at that time the 
name of Wordsworth, though beginning to emerge 
from the dark cloud of scorn and contumely which 
had hitherto overshadowed it, was yet most imper- 
fectly established. Xot until ten years later was his 
greatness cheerfully and generally acknowledged. I, 
therefore, as the very earliest (without one exception) 
of all who came forward, in the beginning of his career 
to honor and welcome him, shrunk with disgust from 
making any sentence of mine the occasion for an 
explosion of vulgar malice against him. But the 
grandeur of the passage here cited inevitably spoke 
for itself ; and he that would have been most scornful 
on hearing the name of the poet coupled with this 
epithet of " great " could not but find his malice inter- 
cepted, and himself cheated into cordial admiration, 
by the splendor of the verses. 



176 tlbe Confessions of 

And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth. 
Far sinking into splendor — without end ! 
Fabric it seemed of diamond, and of gold, 
With alabaster domes and silver spires, 
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high 
Uplifted ; here, serene pavilions bright. 
In avenues disposed ; there, towers begirt 
With battlements that on their restless fronts 
Bore stars — illumination of all gems ! 
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought 
Upon the dark materials of the storm 
Now pacified ; on them, and on the coves, 
And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto 
The vapors had receded — taking there 
Their station under a cerulean sky, etc., etc. 

The sublime circumstance " battlements 
that on their restless fronts bore stars " — 
might have been copied from my architect- 
ural dreams, for it often occurred. We 
he^r it reported of Dryden, and of Fuseli 
in modern times, that they thought proper 
to eat raw meat for the sake of obtaining 
splendid dreams ; how much better, for such 
a purpose, to have eaten opium, which yet 
I do not remember that any poet is recorded 
to have done, except the dramatist Shad- 
well ; and in ancient days, Homer is, I think, 
rightly reputed to have known the virtues 
of opium. 



an iBmiieb ©pium:=Bater» 177 

To my architecture succeeded drea'ms o^ 
lakes, and silvery expanses of water : these 
haunted me so much, that I feared (though 
possibly it will appear ludicrous to a medi- 
cal man) that some dropsical state or tend- 
ency of the brain might thus be making 
itself (to use a metaphysical word) ohtectwe 
and the sentient organ project itself as its 
own object. For two months I suffered 
greatly in my head — a part of my bodily 
structure which had hitherto been so clear 
from all touch or taint of weakness (physi- 
cally, I mean), that I used to say of it, as 
the last Lord Oxford said of his stomach, 
that it seemed likely to survive the rest of 
my person. Till now I had never felt a 
headache, even, or any the slightest pain, 
except rheumatic pains caused by my own 
folly. However, I got over this attack, 
though it must have been verging on some- 
thing very dangerous. 

The waters now changed their character 
—from translucent lakes, shining like mir- 
rors, they now became seas and oceans. 
And now came a tremendous change, which, 
unfolding itself slowly like a scroll, through 
many months, promised an abiding torment ; 
12 



178 trbe Confessions of 

and, in fact, it never left me until the wind- 
ing up of my case. Hitherto the human 
face had often mixed in my dreams, but nofc 
despotically, nor with any especial power 
of tormenting. But now that which I have 
called the tyranny of the human face began to 
unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my Lon- 
don life might be answerable for this. Ba 
that as it may, now it was that upon the rock- 
ing waters of the ocean the human face began 
to appear ; the sea appeared paved with in- 
numerable faces, upturned to the heavens; 
faces imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged 
upward by thousands, by myriads, by gener- 
ations, by centuries ; my agitation was infi- 
nite, my mind tossed, and surged with the 
ocean. 

J/ay, 1818. The Malay has been a fear- 
ful enemy for months. I have been every 
night, through his means, transported into 
Asiatic scenes. I know not whether others 
share in my feelings on this point ; but I 
have often thought that if I were compelled 
to forego England, and to live in China, and 
among Chinese manners and modes of life 
and scenery, I should go mad. The causes 
of my horror lie deep, and some of them 



an J£n0li6b ©pium^Bater^ 179 

must be common to others. Southern Asia, 
in genera], is the seat of awful images and 
associations. As the cradle of the human 
race, it would alone have a dim and rever- 
ential feeling connected with it. But there 
are other reasons. No man can pretend 
that the wild, barbarous, and capricious 
superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes 
elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is 
affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, 
and elaborate religions of Hindostan, etc. 
The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their 
institutions, histories ; modes of faith, etc., 
is so impressive, that to me the vast age of 
the race and name overpowers the sense of 
youth in the individual. A young Chinese 
seems to me an antediluvian man renewed. 
Even Englishmen, though not bred in any 
knowledge of such institutions, cannot but 
shudder at the mystic sublimity of casteSy 
that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, 
through such immemorial tracts of time; 
nor can any man fail to be aw^ed by the 
names of the Ganges, or the Euphrates. It 
contributes much to these feelings, that 
Southern Asia is, and has been for thou» 
sands of years, the part of the earth most 



180 XTbe Confeeeione of 

swarming with human life — the great 
officina gentium, Man is a weed in those 
regions. The vast empires, also, into which 
the enormous population of Asia has always 
been cast, give a further sublimity to the 
feelings associated with all Oriental names 
or images. In China, over and above what 
it has in common with the rest of Soutliern 
Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by 
the manners, and the barrier of utter abhor- 
rence, and want of sympathy, placed between 
us by feelings deeper than I can analyze. I 
could sooner live with lunatics, or brute 
animals. All this, and much more than I 
can say, or have time to say, the reader must 
enter into before he can comprehend the 
unimaginable horror which these dreams 
of Oriental imagery, and mythological tort- 
ures, impressed upon me. Under the con- 
necting feeling of tropical heat and vertical 
sunlights, I brought together all creatures, 
birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, 
usages and appearances, that are found in 
all tropical regions, and assembled them to- 
gether in China or Hindostan. From kin- 
dred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all 
her gods under the same lav/, I was stared 



an JBrxQlisb ©ptum=Bater* 181 

at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by 
monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran 
into pagodas, and was fixed, for centuries^ 
at the summit, or in secret rooms : I was 
the idol ; I was the priest ; I was worshiped ; 
I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of 
Brahma through all the forest of Asia : Vish- 
nu hated me ; Seeva laid wait for me. I 
came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris : I had 
done a deed, they said, which the ibis and 
the crocodile trembled at. I w\as buried, for 
a thousand years, in stone coffins, with 
mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers 
at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was 
kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles ; 
and laid, confounded with all unutterable 
slimy things, among reeds and Nilotic mud. 
I thus give the reader some slight ab« 
straction of my Oriental dreams, which 
always filled me with such amazement at 
the monstrous scenery, that horror seemed 
absorbed, for awhile, in sheer astonishment. 
Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that 
swallowed up the astonishment, and left 
me, not so much in terror, as in hatred and 
abomination of what I saw. Over every 
form, and threat, and punishment, and dim, 



182 ^be Contessione ot 

sightless incarceration, brooded a sense of 
eternity and infinity tliat drove me into 
an oppression as of madness. Into these 
dreams only, it was, with one or two slight 
exceptions, that any circumstances of phys- 
ical horror entered. All before had been 
moral and spiritual terrors. But here the 
main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or 
crocodiles, especially the last. The cursed 
crocodile became to me the object of more 
horror than almost all the rest. I was com- 
pelled to live with him ; and (as was always 
the case, almost, in my dreams) for cent- 
uries. I escaped sometimes, and found 
myself in Chinese houses with cane tables, 
etc. All the feet of the tables, sofas, etc., 
soon became instinct with life: the abomi- 
nable head of the crocodile, and his leer- 
ing eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into 
a thousand repetitions ; and I stood loathing 
and fascinated. And so often did this hid- 
eous reptile haunt my dreams, that many 
times the ver^ same dream was broken up 
in the very same way : I heard gentle voices 
speaking to me (I hear everything when I 
am sleepmg), and instantly I awoke ; it was 
broad noon, and my children were standing, 



an iBn^Ueb ©piurrirsjEatcr* 183 

hand in hand, at my bedside, come to show 
me their colored shoes, or new frocks, or to 
let me see them dressed for going out. I 
protest that so awful was the transition 
from the damned crocodile, and the other 
unuttei'able monsters and abortions of my 
dreams, to the sight of innocent hitman 
natures, and of infancy, that, in the mi^^hty 
and sudden revulsion of mind, I wept, and 
could not forbear it, as I kissed their 
faces. 

Juite, 1819. — I have had occasion to re- 
mark, at various periods of my life, that 
the death of those whom we love, and, in- 
deed, the contemplation of death generally, 
is {cceteris paribus) more affecting in summer 
than in any other season of the year. And 
the reasons are these three, I think : first, 
that the visible heavens in summer appear 
far higher, more distant, and (if such a sol- 
ecism may be excused) more infinite ; the 
clouds by which chiefly the eye expounds 
the distance of the blue pavilion stretched 
over our heads are in summer more 
voluminous, massed, and accumulated in 
far grander and more towering piles : second- 
ly, the light and the appearances of the 



184 Zbc ContcBBions ct 

declining and the setting sun «"ii'e much 
more fitted to be types and cliaracters 
of the infinite : and, thirdly (which is the 
main reason), the exuberant and riotous 
prodigality of life naturally forces the 
mind more powerfully upon the antagonist 
thought of death, and the wintery sterility 
of the grave. For it may be observed, 
generally, that wherever two thoughts 
stand related to each other by a law of 
antagonism, and exist, as it were, by mutual 
repulsion, they are apt to suggest each 
other. On tliese accounts it is that I find 
it impossible to banish the thought of death 
when I am walking alone in the endless 
days of summer; and any particular death, 
if not more affecting, at least haunts my 
mind more obstinately and besiegingly in 
that season. Perhaps this cause, and a 
slight incident which I omit, might have 
been the immediate occasions of the follow- 
ing dream to which, however, a predispo- 
sition must always have existed in my 
mind ; but having been once roused, it never 
left me, and split into a thousand fantastic 
varieties, which often suddenly reunited, ard 
composed again the original dream. 




He also raised his hand to God." 



an lEn^lleb ©pium=i£atet, 185 

1 thought that it was a Sunday morning 
in May ; that it was Easter Sunday, and as 
yet very early in the morning. 1 was stand- 
ing, as it seemed to me, at the door of my 
own cottage. Right before me hiy the very 
scene which could really be commanded fi'om 
that situation, but exalted, as was usual, 
and solemnized by the power of dreams. 
There were the same mountains, and the 
same lovely valley at their feet; but the 
mountains were raised to more than Alpine 
height, and there was interspace far larger 
between them of meadows and forest lawns ; 
the hedges were rich with white roses ; and 
no living creature was to be seen, excepting 
that in the green churchyard there were 
cattle tranquilly reposing upon the verdant 
graves, and particularly about the grave of 
a child whom I had tenderly loved, just as 
I had really beheld them, a little before sun- 
rise, in the same summer, when that child 
died. I gazed upon the well-known scene, 
and I said aloud (as I thought) to myself, 
"It yet wants much of sunrise, and it is 
Easter Sunday; and that is the day on 
which they celebrate the first-fruits of res- 
urrection. I will walk abroad ; old griefs 



186 ^l^c QonUsexorxB ot 

shall be forgotten to-day ; for the air is cool 
and still, and the hills are high, and stretch 
away to heaven ; and the forest glades are 
as quiet as the church-yard ; and with the 
dew I can wash the fever from my forehead, 
and then I shall be unhappy no longer." 
And I turned, as if to open my garden gate ; 
and immediately I saw upon the left a scene 
far different ; but which yet the power of 
dreams had reconciled into harmony with 
the other. The scene was an Oriental one ; 
and there also it was Easter Sunday, and 
very early in the morning. And at a vast 
distance were visible, as a stain upon the 
horizon, the domes and cupc as of a great 
city— an image or faint a" raction, caught, 
perhaps, in childhood, fron^ some picture of 
Jerusalem. And not a bow-Si.ot from me, 
upon a stone, and shaded by Judean palms, 
there sat a woman ; and I looked, and it was 

Ann! She fixed her eyes upon me ear- 

nestly ; and I said to her, at length, " So, 
then, I have found you, at last." I waited ; 
but she answered me not a word. Her face 
was the same as when I saw it last, and yet, 
again, how different ! Seventeen years ago, 
when the lamp-light fell upon her face, as 



an iBnQliBb ©pium^sJEatcr* 187 

for the last time I kissed her lips (lips, Ann, 
that to me were not polluted !), her eyes 
were streaming with tears ; her tears were 
now wiped away; she seemed more beautifal 
than she was at that time, but in all other 
points the same, and not older. Her looks 
were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity 
of expression, and I now gazed upon her 
with some awe ; but suddenly her counte- 
nance grew dim, and, turning to the mount- 
ains, I perceived vapors rolling between us ; 
in a moment, all had vanished ; thick dark- 
ness came on ; and in the twinkling of an 
eye I was far away from mountains, and by 
lamp-light in Oxford Street, walking again 
with Ann — just as we walked seventeen 
years before, when we were both chil- 
dren. 

As a final specimen, I cite one of a differ* 
ent character, from 1820. 

The dream commenced with a music which 
now I often heard in dreams — a music of 
preparation and of awakening suspense ; a 
music like the opening of the Coronation 
Anthem, and which, like that^ gave the 
feeling of a vast march, of infinite caval- 
cades filing off, and the tread of innumerable 



188 Zbc ContCBBions ot 

armies. The morning was come of a mighty 
day — a day of crisis and of final hope for 
human nature, then suffering some myste- 
rious eclipse, and laboring in some dread 
extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where — ■ 
somehow, I knew not how — by some beings, 
I knew not AA^hom — a battle, a strife, an 
agony, was conducting — was evolving like a 
great drama, or piece of music ; with Avliich 
my sympathy was the more insupportable 
from my confusion as to its place, its cause, 
its nature, and its possible issue. I, as is 
usual in dreams (where, zt necessity, we 
make ourselves central to every movement), 
had the power and yet had not the power, 
to decide it. I had the power, if I could 
raise myself to will it ; and yet again had 
not the power, for tlie weight of twenty 
Atlantics AA-as upon me, or tlie oppression 
of inexpiable guilt. " Deeper than ever 
plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then, 
like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some 
greater interest was at stake ; some mightier 
cause than cA^er yet the sv/ord had pleaded, 
or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came 
sudden alarms; hurryings to and fro; trep- 
idations of innumerable fugitives. I knew 



an iBnQlieb ©pium*}6ater» 189 

not whether from the good cause or the bad ; 
darkness and lights ; tempest and human 
faces ; and at last, with the sense that all 
was lost, female forms, and the features 
that were worth all the world to me, and 
^but a moment allowed — and clasped hands, 
and heart-breaking partings, and then — 
everlasting farewells ! and, with a sigh, such 
as the caves of hell sighed when the 
incestuous mother uttered the abhorred 
name of death, the sound was reverberated 
— everlasting farewells ! and again, and 
yet again reverberated — everlasting fare- 
wells ! 

And i awoke in struggles, and cried aloud 
^^" I will sleep no more ! " 

But I am now called upon to wind up a 
narrative which has already extended to an 
unreasonable length. Within more spacious 
limits, the materials which I have used 
might have been better unfolded ; and much 
which I have not used might have been add- 
ed with effect. Perhaps, however, enough 
has been given. It now remains that I 
should say something of the way in which 
this conflict of horrors was finally brought 
to its crisis. The reader is already awar^ 



190 trbc Conte66fon6 of 

(from a passage near the beginning of 
the introduction to the first part) that the 
opium-eater has, in some way or other, " un- 
wound, almost to its final links, the accursed 
chain which bound him." By what means? 
To have narrated this, according to the 
original intention, would have far exceeded 
the space which can now be allowed. It is 
fortunate, as such a cogent reason exists for 
abridging it, that I should, on a maturer 
view of the case, have been exceedingly un- 
willing to injure, by any such unaffecting 
details, the impression of the history itself, 
as an appeal to the prudence and the con- 
science of the yet unconfirmed opium-eater, 
or even (though a very inferior considera- 
tion) to injure its effect as a composition. 
The interest of the judicious ro?tder will not 
attach itself chiefly to the subject of the 
fascinating spells, but to the fascinating 
power. Not the opium-eater, but the opium, 
is the true hero of the tale, and the legiti- 
mate center on which the interest revolves. 
The object was to display the marvelous 
agency of opium, whether for pleasure or 
for pain ; if that is done, the action of tha 
piece has closed. 



an iSxxQlieb Ovi^m^^lBatct. 191 

However, as some people, in spite of all 
laws to the contrary, will persist in asking 
what became of the opium-eater, and in what 
state he now is, I answer for him thus : The 
reader is aware that opium had long ceased 
to found its empire on spells of pleasure ; it 
was solely by the tortures connected with 
the attempt to abjure it, that it kept its 
hold. Yet, as other tortures, no less, it may 
be thought, attended the non-abjuration of 
such a tyrant, a choice only of evils was 
left; and that might as well have been 
adopted, which, however terrific in itself, 
held out a prospect of final restoration to hap- 
piness. This appears true ; but good logic 
gave the author no strength to act upon it. 
However, a crisis arrived for the author's 
life, and a crisis for other objects still dearer 
to him, and which will always be far dearer 
to him than his life, even now that it is 
again a happy one. I saw that I must die, 
if I continued the opium : I determined, 
therefore, if that should be required, to die 
in throwing it off. How much I was at that 
time taking,, I cannot say ; for the opium 
which I used had been purchased for me by 
a friend, who afterwards refused to let me 



192 tlbe Conteseions of 

pay him ; so that I could not ascertain even 
what quantity I had used within a year. I 
apprehend, however, that I took it very 
irreguhuiy, and that I varied from about 
fifty or sixty grains to one Imndred and 
fifty a day. My first task was to reduce it 
to forty, to thirty, and, as fast as I could. 
to twelve grains. 

I triumphed ; but thhik not, reader, that 
therefore my sufferings were ended ; nor 
think of me as of one sitting in a dejected 
state. Think of me as of one, even when 
four months had passed, still agitated, 
writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered ; 
and much, perhaps, in the situation of him 
who has been racked, as I collect the tor- 
ments of that state from the affecting 
account of them left by the most innocent 
sufferer ^ (of the time of James I.). Mean- 
time, I derived no benefit from any med- 
icine, except one prescribed to me by an 
Edinburgh surgeon of great eminence, 
namely, ammoniated tincture of valerian. 

* William Litligow ; his book (Travels, etc.,) is ill 
and pedantically written ; but the account of his own 
sufferings on the rack at Malaga is overpoweringly 
affecting. 



an yBrxQliBb ©plum:=Eater. 193 

Medical account, therefore, of my emancipa- 
tion, I have not much to give ; and even that 
little, as managed by a man so ignorant of 
medicine as myself, would probably tend 
only to mislead. At all events, it would be 
misplaced in this situation. The moral of 
the narrative is addressed to the opium- 
eater; and therefore, of necessity, li^mited 
in its application. If he is taught to fear 
and tremble, enough has been effected. But 
he may say that the issue of my case is at 
least a proof that opium, after a seventeen 
years' use, and an eight years' abuse of its 
powers, may still be renounced ; and that he 
may chance to bring to the task greater 
energy than I did, or that, with a stronger 
constitution than mine, he may obtain the 
same results with less. This may be true ; 
I would not presume to measure the efforts 
of other men by my own. I heartily wish 
him more energy ; I wish him the same suc- 
cess. Nevertheless, I had motives external 
to myself which he may unfortunately 
want ; and these supplied me with conscien- 
tious supports, which mere personal interests 
might fail to supply to a mind debilitated by 
opium. 
13 



194 ^be ContceeiorxB ot 

Jeremy Taylor * conjectures that it may 
be as painful to be born as to die. I think 
it probable ; and, during the whole period 
of diminishing the opium, I had the torments 
of a man passing out of one mode of exist- 
ence into another. The issue was not death, 
but a sort of physical regeneration, and, I 
may add, that ever since, at intervals, I 
have had a restoration of more than youth- 
ful spirits, though under the pressure of 
diflSculties which, in a less happy state of 
mind, I should have called misfortunes. 

One memorial of my former condition still 
remains ; my dreams are not yet perfectly 
calm ; the dread swell and agitation of 
the storm have not wholly subsided; the 
legions that encamped in them are drawing 
off, but not all departed ; my sleep is tumult- 

* In all former editions, I had ascribed this senti- 
ment to Jeremy Taylor. On a close search, how- 
ever, wishing to verify the quotation, it appeared 
that I had been mistaken. Something very like it 
occurs more than once in the bishop's voluminous 
writings ; but the exact passage moving in my mind 
had evidently been this, which follows, from Lord 
Bacon's ** Essay on Death ; " ** It is as natural to die 
as to be bom ; and to a little infant perhaps the one is 
as painful as the other." 



an EttGlisb ©ptum=l£ater» 195 

uous, and like the gates of Paradise to our 
first parents when looking back from afar, 
it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton) — . 

With dreadful faces thronsjea and fiery arms. 



APPENDIX. 



The proprietors of this little work having 
determiued on reprinting it, some explana- 
tion seems called for, to account for the non- 
appearance of a Third Part, promised in the 
" London Magazine " of December last ; and 
the more so, because the proprietors, under 
whose guarantee that promise was issued, 
might otherwise be implicated in the blame 
— little or much — attached to its non-fulfill- 
ment. This blame, in mere justice, the 
author takes wholly upon himself. What 
may be the exact amount of the guilt which 
he thus appropriates, is a very dark question 
to his own judgment, and not much illu- 
minated by any of the masters on casuistry 
whom he has consulted on the occasion. 
On the one hand, it seems generally agreed 
that a promise is binding in the inverse ratio 
of the numbers to whom it is made; for 
which reason it is that we see many persons 

197 



198 BppenDtx* 

break promises without scruple tiiat are 
made to a whole nation, who keep their faith 
religiously in all private engagements — 
breaches of promise toward the stronger 
party being committed at a man's own 
peril; on the other hand, the only parties 
interested in the promises of an author 
are his readers, and these it is a point of 
modesty in any author to believe as few as 
possible ; or perhaps only one, in which case 
any promise imposes a sanctity of moral 
obligation which it is shocking to think of. 
Casuistry dismissed, however — the author 
throws himself on the indulgent consider- 
ation of all who may conceive themselves 
aggrieved by his delay, in the following 
account of his own condition from the end 
of last year, when the engagement was 
made, up nearly to the present time. For 
any purpose of self-excuse, it might be 
sufficient to say, that intolerable bodily 
suffering had totally disabled him for almost 
any exertion of mind, more especially for 
such as demand and presuppose a pleasur- 
able and a genial state of feeling ; but, as 
a case that may by possibility contribute a 
trifle to the medical history of opium in a 



BppenDti* 199 

further stage of its action than can often 
have been brought under the notice of pro- 
fessional men, he has judged that it might 
be acceptable to some readers to have it 
described more at length. Fiat experi- 
mentum in corpore vili is a just rule where 
there is any reasonable presumption of 
benefit to arise on a large scale. What the 
benefit may be, will admit of a doubt ; but 
there can be none as to the value of the 
body, for a more worthless body than his 
own, the author is free to confess, cannot 
be. It is his pride to believe, that it is the 
very ideal of a base, crazy, despicable human 
system, that hardly ever could have been 
meant to be seaworthy for two days under 
the ordinary storms and wear-and-tear of 
life ; and, indeed, if that were the creditable 
way of disposing of human bodies, he must 
own that he should almost be ashamed to 
bequeath his wretched structure to any re- 
spectable dog. But now to the case, which, 
for the sake of avoiding the constant recur- 
rence of a cumbersome periphrasis, the 
author will take the liberty of giving in the 
first person. 

Those who have read the confessions wiu 



200 Bppcn^fi* 

have closed them with the impression that 
I had wholly renounced the use of opium. 
This impression I meant to convey, and that 
for two reasons : first, because the very act 
of deliberately recording such a state of suf- 
fering necessarily presumes in the recorder 
a power of surveying his own case as a cool 
spectator, and a degree of spirits for ade- 
quately describing it, which it would be in- 
consistent to suppose in any person speak- 
ing from the station of an actual sufferer ; 
secondly, because I, who had descended 
from so large a quantity as eight thousand 
drops, to so small a one (comparatively speak- 
ing) as a quantity ranging between "-.hree 
hundred and one hundred and sixty drops, 
might well suppose that the victory was in 
effect achieved. In suffering my readers, 
therefore, to think of me as of a reformed 
opium-eater, I left no impression but what 
I shared myself, and, as may be seen, even 
this impression was left to be collected from 
the general tone of the conclusion, and not 
from any specific words, which are in no 
instance at variance with the literal truth. 
In no long time after that paper was 
written, I became sensible that the effort 



BppenDii* 201 

which remained would cost me far more 
energy than I had anticipated, and the 
necessity for making it was more apparent 
every month. In particular, I became 
aware of an increasing callousness or defect 
of sensibility in the stomach; and this I 
imagined might imply a schirrous state of 
that organ either formed or forming. An 
eminent physician, to whose kindness I was, 
at that time, deeply indebted, informed me 
that such a termination of my case was not 
impossible, though likely to be forestalled 
by a different termination, in the event of 
my continuing the use of opium. Opium, 
therefore, I resolved wholly to abjure, as 
soon as I should find myself at liberty to 
bend my undivided attention and energy to 
this purpose. It was not, however, until 
the 24th of June last that any tolerable con- 
currence of facilities for such an attempt 
arrived. On that day I began my experi- 
ment, having previously settled in my own 
mind that I would not flinch, but would 
" stand up to the scratch," under any possible 
" punishment." I must premise, that about 
one hundred and seventy or one hundred 
and eighty drops had been my ordinary 



202 BppenMi* 

allowance for many months. Occasionally 
I had run up as high as five hundred, and 
once nearly to seven hundred. In repeated 
preludes to my final experiment I had also 
gone as low as one hundred drops, but had 
found it impossible to stand it beyond the 
fourth day, which, by the way, I have always 
found more difficult to get over than any of 
the preceding three. I went off under easy 
sail — one hundred and thirty drops a day 
for three days ; on the fourth I plunged at 
once to eighty. The misery which I now 
suffered " took the conceit " out of me, at 
once; and for about a month I continued off 
and on about this mark; then I sunk to 
sixty, and the next day to — none at all. 
This was the first day for nearly ten years 
that I had existed without opium. I per- 
severed in my abstinence for ninety hours ; 
that is, upward of half a week. Then I took 
— ask me not how much ; say, ye severest, 
what would ye have done? Then I 
abstained again ; then took about twenty- 
live drops ; then abstained ; and so on. 

Meantime, the symptoms which attended 
my case for the first six weeks of the experi- 
ment were these : enormous irritability 



and excitement of the whole system ; the 
stomach, in particular, restored to a full 
feehng of vitality and sensibility, but often 
in great pain ; unceasing restlessness night 
and day; sleep — I scarcely knew what it 
was — three hours out of the twenty-four 
was the utmost I had, and that so agitated 
and shallow that I heard every sound that 
was near me; lower jaw constantly swell- 
ing ; mouth ulcerated ; and many other dis- 
tressing symptoms that would be tedious 
to repeat, among which, however, I must 
mention one, because it had never failed to 
accompany any attempt to renounce opium 
— namely, violent sternutation. This now 
became exceedingly troublesome ; some- 
times lastin^^ for two hours at once, and re- 
curring at least twice or three times a day. 
I was not much surprised at this, on recol- 
lecting what I had somewhere heard or read, 
that the membrane which lines the nostrils 
is a, prolongation of that which lines the 
stomach ; whence, I believe, are explained 
the inflammatory appearances abou^. the 
nostrils of dram-drinkers. The sudden res- 
toration of its original sensibility to the 
stomach expressed itself, I suppose, in this 



204 BppenWi^ 

wa3^ It is remarkable, also, that, during 
the whole period of years through which I 
had taken opium, I had never once caught 
cold (as the phrase is) nor even the slightest 
cough. But now a violent cold attacked 
me, and a cough soon after. In an unfinished 
fragment of a letter begun about this time 

to , I find these words : " You ask 

me to write the . Do you know 

Beaumont and Fletcher's play of ' Thierry 
and Theodoret?' There you will see my 
case as to sleep ; nor is it much of an exag- 
geration in other features. I protest to you 
that I have a greater influx of thoughts in 
one liour at present than in a whole year 
under the reign of opium. It seems as though 
all the thoughts which had been frozen up for 
a decade of years by opium had now, accord- 
ing to the old fable, been thawed at once, 
such a multitude stream in upon me from 
all quarters. Yet such is my impatience 
and hideous irritability, that, for one which 
I detained and wiite down, fifty escape me. 
In spite of my weariness from suffering and 
want of sleep, I cannot stand still or sit for 
two minutes together. ' I nunc^ et versus 
tecum meditare canoros^ " 



BppcnMi* 205 

At this stage of my experiment I sent 
to a neighboring surgeon, requesting that he 
would come over to see me. In the evening 
he came, and after briefly stating the case 
to him, I asked this question : Whether he 
did not think that the opium might have 
acted as a stimulus to the digestive organs ; 
and that the present state of suffering in 
the stomach, which manifestly was the 
cause of the inability to sleep, might arise 
from indigestion? His answer was — No: 
on the contrary he thought that the suffer- 
ing was caused by digestion itself, which 
should naturally go on below the conscious- 
ness, but which, from the unnatural state ol 
the stomach, vitiated by so long a use of 
opium, was become distinctly perceptible. 
This opnion w^as plausible, and the uninter- 
mitting nature of the suffering disposes me 
to think that it was true ; for, if it had been 
any mere irregular affection of the stomach, it 
should naturally have intermitted occasion- 
ally and constantly fluctuated as to degree. 
The intention of nature, as manifested in the 
healthy state, obviously is, to withdraw 
from our notice all the vital motions, such 
as the circulation of the blood, the expan- 



206 BppenMi. 

sion and contraction of the lungs, the peris- 
taltic action of the stomach, etc. ; and oi)iura, 
it seems, is able in this, as in other instances, 
to counteract her purposes. By the advice 
of the surgeon I tried bitters. For a short 
time these greatly mitigated the feelings 
under which I labored ; but about the forty- 
second day of the experiment the symptoms 
already noticed began to retire, and new ones 
to arise of a different and far more torment- 
ing class ; under these, with but a few in- 
tervals of remission, I have since continued 
to suffer. But I dismissed them undescribed 
for two reasons; first, because the mind 
revolts from retracing circumstantially 
any sufferings from which it is removed 
by too short or by no interval. To do this 
with minuteness enough to make the review 
of any use, would be indeed " infandum re- 
novare dolorem^'' and possibly without a 
sufficient motive ; for secondly, I doubt 
whether this latter state be any way refer- 
able to opium, positively considered, or even 
negatively ; that is, whether it is to be num- 
bered among the last evils from the duect 
action of opium, or even among the earliest 
evils consequent upon a want of opium in a 



appenDti. 207 

gystem long deranged by its use. Certainly 
one part of the symptoms might be ac- 
counted for from the time of year (August) ; 
for though the summer was not a hot one^ 
yet in any case the sum of all the heat 
funded (if one may say so) during the pre- 
Tious months, added to the existing heat of 
that month, naturally renders August in its. 
better half the hottest part of the year ; atid 
it so haDpened that the excessive perspira- 
tion, which even at Christmas attends any 
•^rcat reduction in the d'^ily quantum of 
opium, and which in July was so violent as- 
to oblige me to use a bath five or six times^ 
a day, had about the setting in of the hot- 
test season wholly retired, on which account 
any bad effect of the heat might be the 
more unmitigated. Another symptom, 
namely, what in my ignorance I call in- 
ternal rheumatism (sometimes affecting the 
shoulders, etc., but more often appearing: 
to be seated in the stomach), seemed agar 
less probably attributable to the opium, oi 
the went of opium, than to the dampness 
of the house * which I inhabit, which had 

* In saying this, I meant no disrespect to the in- 
dividual house, as the reader will understand when i 



208 BppcnDii^ 

about that time attained its maximum, 
July having been, as usual, a month of in- 
cessant rain in our most rainy part of 
England. 

Under these reasons for doubting whether 
opium had any connection with the latter 
stage of my bodily wretchedness — (except, 
indeed, as an occasional cause, as having 
left the body weaker and more crazy, and 
thus predisposed to any mal-influence what- 
ever) — I willingly spare my reader all 
description of it : let it perish to him ; and 
would that I could as easily say, let it 
perish to my own remembrances, that any 
future hours of tranquillity may not be dis- 
turbed by too vivid an ideal of possible 
human misery ! 

So much for the sequel of my experiment ; 
as to the former stage, in which properly 

tell him that, with the exception of one or two 
princely mansions, and some few inferior ones that 
have been coated with Koman cement, I am not ac- 
quainted with any house in this mountainous district 
which is wholly waterproof. The architecture of 
books, I flatter myself, is conducted on just prin- 
ciples in this country ; but for any other architecture, 
it is in a barbarous state, and, what is worse, in a 
retrograde state. 



BppcnJ>fi. 209 

lies the experiment and its application to 
other cases, I must request my reader not 
to forget the reasons for which I have 
recorded it. These were two. First, a 
belief that I might ' C some trifle to the 
history of opium as a medical agent; mthis 
I am aware'that I have not at all fulfilled 
my own intentions, in consequence of the 
torpor of mind, pain of body, and extreme 
disgust to the subject, which besieged me 
while writing that part of my paper; which 
part being immediately sent off to the press 
(distant about five degrees of latitude), can- 
not be corrected or improved. But from 
this account, rambling as it may be, it is 
evident that thus much of benefit may 
arise to the persons most interested in such 
a history of opium— namely, to opium- 
eaters in general— that it establishes, for 
their consolation and ncouragement, the 
fact that opium may be renounced, and 
without greater sufferings than an ordinary 
resolution may support ; and by a pretty 
rapid course * of descent. 

* On which last notice I would remark that mine 
was too rapid, and the suffering therefore needlessls 
aggravated ; or rather, perhaps, it was not suffl- 



210 



appenDfx^ 



To communicate this result of my experi- 
ment was my foremost purpose. Secondly, 

ciently continuous wi,nd equably graduated. But, that 
the reader may judge for himself, and, above all, 
that th opium-eater, who is preparing to retire from 
business, may have every sort of information before 
him, I oubjoin my diary. 



pntsT 


WEEK. 




Drop 


s of Laudanum. 


Monday, June 


24th. 


... 130 


({ 


25th. 


. . . 140 


<( 


26th. 


... 130 


*'- 


27th. 


. .. 80 


<( 


28th. 


... 80 


<c 


29th. 


... 80 


<( 


30th. 


... 80 


THIKD 


WEEK. 




Drop 


s ^/Laudanum. 


ftfonday, July 


^ h. 


. .. 300 


(( 


9th. 


... :3 




13th 1 

ir:h 


Hia- 




■ tus in 


t( 


ICcL 


MS. 


M 


l4th. 


... 76 



SECOND WEEK. 

Drops of Laudanunt' 

Monday, July 1st 8C 



" 2d.... 


.. 80 


" 3d.... 


.. 90 


" 4th... 


.. 100 


" 5th... 


.. 80 


« 6th... 


.. 80 


*' 7th... 


.. 80 



FOURTH \\TEEK. 

Drops of LaudanuTtt. 

MoLdav, July 15th 76 

" 16th.... 734 
'* 17th.... 73| 
" 18th.... 70 
" 19th.... 240 
" 20th.... 80 
" 21st 350 



nPTH WEEK. 

Drops of Laudanum. 

Monday, July 22d 60 

23d none 

24th none 

25th none 

26th 200 

27th none 

What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will 
Ask, perhaps to such numbers as 300, 350, etc. ? The 
impiilBe to these relapses was mere infirmity of pu^- 



BppenDfi* 211 

as a T^nrpose collateral to this I wished ta 
explai}^ how it had become impossible for 
me to compose a Third Part in time to 
accompany this republication ; for, during 
the very time of this experiment, the proof- 
sheets of this reprint were sent to me from 
London ; and such was my inability to ex- 
pand or to improve them, that I could not 
even bear to read them over with attention 
enough to notice the press errors, or to cor- 
rect any verbal inaccuracies. These were 
my reasons for troubling my reader with 
any record, long or short, of experiments 
relating to so truly base a subject as my 
own body ; and I am earnest with the 
reader, that he will not forget them, or sa 
far misapprehend me as to believe it possi- 

pose ; the motive^ where any motive blended with 
this impulse, was either the principle of *^reculef 
pour mieux sauter — (for under the torpor of a large 
dose, which lasted for a day or two, a less quantity 
satisfied the stomach, which, on awaking, found it- 
self partly accustomed to this new ration) — or else it 
was this principle — that of sufferings, otherwise 
equal, those will be borne best which meet with $ 
mood of anger ; now, whenever I ascended to any 
large dose, I was furiously incensed on the following 
day, and could then have bone anjrthing. 



212 appen^fi. 

ble that I would condescend to so rascallv 

• 

a subject for its own sake, or, indeed, for 
any less object than that of general benefit 
to others. Such an animal as the self-ob- 
serving valetudinarian, I know there is. 1 
have met him myself occasionally, and 1 
know that he is the worst imaginable heaix^ 
tontimoroumenos ; aggravating and sustain* 
ing, by calling into distinct consciousness^ 
every symptom that would else, perhaps, 
under a different direction given to the 
thoughts, become evanescent. But as to 
myself, so profound is my contempt for this 
undignified and selfish habit, that I could as 
little condescend to it as I could to spend 
my time in watching a poor servant-girl, to 
whom at this moment I hear some lad or 
other making love at the back of my house. 
Is it for a Transcendental philosopher to 
feel any curiosity on such an occasion ? Or 
can I, whose life is worth only eight and a 
half years' purchase, be supposed to have 
leisure for such trivial employments ? How- 
ever, to put this out of question, I shall say 
one thing which will, perhaps, shock some 
readers ; but I am sure it ought not to do so, 
considering the motives on which I say it. 



BppenDti. 213 

No man, I suppose, employs much of his time 
on the phenomena of his own body without 
some regard for it ; whereas the reader sees 
that, so far from looking upon mine with 
any complacency or regard, I hate it and 
make it the object of my bitter ridicule and 
contempt ; and I should not be displeased 
to know that the last indignities which the 
law inflicts upon the bodies of the worst 
malefactors might hereafter fall upon it. 
And in testification of my sincerity in say- 
ing this, I shall make the following offer. 
Like other men, I have particular fancies 
about the place of my burial ; having lived 
chiefly in a mountainous region, I rather 
cleave to the conceit that a grave in a green 
churchyard among the ancient and solitary 
hills will be a sublimer and more tranquil 
place of repose for a philosopher than any 
in the hideous Golgothas of London. Yet, 
if the gentlemen of Surgeons' Hall think 
that any benefit can redound to their science 
from inspecting the appearances in the body 
of an opium-eater, let them speak but a 
word, and I will take care that mine shall 
be legally secured to them — that is, as soon 
as I have done with it myself. Let theni 



214 BppenMt* 

not hesitate to express their wishes npon 
any scruples of false delicacy and consider- 
ation for my feelings ; I assure them that 
they will do me too much honor by " de- 
monstrating" on such a crazy body as 
mine ; and it will give me pleasure to antic- 
ipate this posthumous revenge and insult 
inflicted upon that which has caused me so 
much suffering in this life. Such bequests 
are not common ; reversionary benefits con- 
tingent upon the death of the testator are 
indeed dangerous to announce in many cases. 
Of this we have a remarkable instance in. 
the habits of a Roman prince, who used, 
upon any notification made to him by rich 
persons, that they had left him a handsome 
estate in their wills, to express his entire 
satisfaction at such arrangements, and his 
gracious acceptance of those royal legacies ; 
but then, if the testators neglected to give 
him immediate possession of the property 
— if they traitorously " persisted in living "* 
(si vivereperseverarent as Suetonius expresses 
it), he was highly provoked, and took his 
measures accordingly. In those times, and 
from one of the worst of the Caesars, we 
might expect such conduct , but I am sura 



2lppen&(i» 215 

that, from English surgeons at this day, I 
need look for no expressions of impatience, 
or of any other feelings but such as are 
answerable to that pure love of science, and 
all its interests, which induces me to make 
such an oflfer. 

September 30, 1822, 
10 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 







gflglfl?^ 


ffiU:--n:::^::^-- 



